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EGYPT    IN    1898 


StREF.T    MrSTTTANR. 


EGYPT    IN    1898 


BY 

G.    W.    STEEVENS 

AUTH  OR   OK 

"The  Land  of  the  Dollar," 
"  With  the  Conquering  Turk." 


NEW    YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  &  COMPANY 

1899 


li\<\ 


CONTENTS. 


L 

THE  IMPERIAL   HIGHWAY. 

PAGE 

The  Peninsular  and  Oriental  Express — British  empire-builder3^<*^ 
— The  Imperial    Englishman — Brindisi — The  mail- bags — A 
P.  and  0.  liner — Lascars — The  gate  of  the  East       .         .         1 


II. 

PORT  SAID. 

An  unholy  ritua!-"A  great  coaling-station — A  Levantine  para- 
dise— The  grievances  of  Port  Said — A  waiting  town— The 
morals  of  a  port  of  call       . 19 


III. 


IN   SEARCH   OF   THE   EAST. 

The  Canal— Isniailia— The  East  and  the  Levant— Suez— Seyid 
Mohammed  Mustapha— An  Arab  music-hall— Port  Tewfik 
— The  Canal  revenues- A  feast  of  colour  ...       29 


VI  rOXTEXTS. 

IV. 

IN   8EARCH    OF   EGYPT. 

Grand  Cairo — Shephoard's  luitel — Tlie  hazaar — The  mosque  of 
El  Azliar — A  professor  and  liis  pupils  —  The  mosque  of 
Mahomet  AH — The  people — Tommy  Atkius        ...       48 

V. 

ON   THE   EGYPTIAN   CONSTITUTION. 

\)utward  evidences  of  English  rule — A  heart-breaking  handicap 
—A  topsy-turvy  constitution— Tviiedive,  Consul-General,  and 
Sirdar — Foreign  capitulations — Caisse  de  la  Dette^Tlie 
real  Governor  of  Egypt,  Thomas  Cook  &  Son-^he  pro- 
gress of  fifteen  years  .         .  ....       60 

VL 

HOW   IT  STRIKES   A   PASHA. 

Christmas  Day  in  Cairo — The  anti-English  point  of  view — The 
case  of  the  Procureur-G^ndral-NSir  John  Scott-vOrientals 
and  Western  rule — A  hostile  pasha 71 

VII. 

AN   ARABIC   EDITOR   AND   BRITISH  TRADE. 

The  keeping  of  diaries — The  necessity  for  a  sense  of  humour — 
The  world's  half-way  house — A  cosmopolitan  bar — The  in- 
terior of  an  Arab  ncwspaper-oflficc — An  editor's  views — A 
scientific  journal— The  want  of  British  capital  and  trade  .       81 

VIII. 

WATER. 

The  fields  of  Egypt — What  the  Nile  is  to  Egypt— The  Barrage 
—The  cultivation  of  Lower  Egypt— ^History  of  tlie  Barrage 
— The  reservoir  at  Assouan  ....         .         .         .94 


CONTENTS.  Vll 

IX. 

AN   EGYPTIAN  ETON. 

In  the  playground — The  primary  school — A   comical   class — 
Marriage  in   the  sixth   standard — An   elaborate  syllabus — 
^English  V.  French — School  discipline — The  annual  sports — 
The  effect  of  it  all  on  the  Egyptian  boy — Chronic  dishonesty     106 

X. 

A   DAY   IN   THE   DESERT. 

An  Arab  house — "Good  all  right  hegin" — A  sea  of  sand — ^A 

guide  at  fault — Lost  in  the  desert    .....     122 

XL 

A  NIGHT   IN  THE  DESERT. 

The  camel's  real  character — The  desert  Whiteley — A  camel- 
track — Illusions  of  the  desert — The  monastery  at  la«t       .     188 


XII. 

A  COPTIC   MONASTERY, 

A  silent  building — The  guest-chamber — The  alluring  cigarette 
— The  position  of  the  Copts — Bedawiu  attacks — Celebration 
of  midnight  mass         .....•■•     142 


XIII. 

TAMING  THE  DESERT. 

The  soda-works  at  Wady  Natrun — Bir  Hooker — A  Swiss  syndi- 
cate-.rNo  British  capital  for  British  Egypt — A  frequented 
track — The  railway     ........     158 


VID  CONTENTS. 

XIV. 

THE  SUDAN  AND  THE  FELLAH. 

-  Preparations  for  war — The  value  ot  the  Sudan — The  possibili- 
ties of  the  Upper  Nile — Sugar-factories-^^rosperity  of  the 
felhih^Sis  incorrigible  imi^rovidence  .....     162 

XV. 

ALEXANDRIA. 

A  business  town — The  wharves  —  The  onion  market — Queen 
city  of  the  Levant— Statistics  of  commerce — -Arab  labour  at 
the  docks — Necessity  for  an  extended  harbour      .         .        .     174 


T^A 


LORD   CROMER   AND   HIS   WORK. 

Velvet  and  steel — A  man  who  knows  his  own  mind — A  diplo- 
matic triumph — When  is  England  going  to  leave  Egypt? — 
Tlie  attitude  of  France — The  French  abroad — Native  views 
of  the  English  occupation — A  French  editor's  opinion — Our 
one  failure — England  or  Turkey    .         .  •        •        •     185 


XVII. 

BITS   OP  OLD   AND    NEW. 

Rumours  of  war — The  Pyramids — The  view  from  the  Great 

Pyramid — A  visit  to  the  Arsenal         .         .        .        ,        .197 


XVIII. 

THE   PILGRIMS. 

The  dragoman  addresses  tiie   tourists — The   nomenclature   of 

donkeys — The  tomb  of  Thi — More  enjoyable  tombs  .         .     204 


CONTENTS.  IX 

XIX. 

THE   PANORAMA. 

\    Scenery  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile — The  water-hoists — Assiout — 

A  monster  bat — Sugar-refineries — The  old  and  the  new        .     213 

XX. 

THE   EUINS. 

Luxor— Thebes — Colossal   ruins — The   tombs   of   the   kings — 

Karnak — The  colossi  of  Memnon 228 

XXI. 

THE   DAHABEAH. 

Assouan — An  Arab  bard — Life  ou  a  dahabeah — How  the  natives 

celebrate  a  ' '  fantasia " .     288 

XXIL 

THE  ANCIENT  EGYPTIANS. 

Ancient  Egyptian  art — Rameses  the  Great — Character  of  the 

people — A  nation  of  monumental  masons  .        •        .        .     243 

XXIII. 

THROUGH   NUBIA, 

The  first  cataract — Philae — Nubia — The  native  telegraph — Sun- 
rise from  Korosko — Abu  Simbel — Wady  Haifa     .         .         .     253 

XXIV. 

COOK. 

Is  he  a  man  or  a  machine  ? — Overcoming  native  prejudices — 
Trial  of  the  Prince  Abbas — A  man  of  force — A  wonderful 


CONTENTS. 

organisation — Influx  of  tourists— Germans  in  Egypt — Cook 
Pasha 264 


XXV. 

LOOKING   BACK  AND   FORWARD. 

The  approach  of  summer— The  essential  Egypt — Backsheesh — 
English   workers  in   Egypt — The  pick   of    the   world — The 
danger  of  an  unconquered  Sudan — International  burdens — 
_No  chance  of  our  leaving  Egypt    ••«•..    274 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


STREET  MUSICIANS  , 

BOATS   RACING  TO   A   SHIP 

IN   A   COURTYARD     . 

THE  TOURIST 

STREET  SCENE,    CklAO 

STREET   SCENE,   CAIRO 

THE   BANKS   OF   THE   NILB 

LADEN   CAMELS 

CAMELS  AT  BEST      . 

ARAB  WOMEN  AND  CHILDRiai 

MARKET-PLACE,   EGYPT 

THE  SPHINX 

ISLAND   OF   PHILiK   IN   THE  NILE,   ABOVE 

WADY   HALFA  FROM   THE   NILE 

STREET   IN   WADY   HALFA     . 

OLD  MOSQUE  TOMB  .  , 


FronttBpiece 

18 

33 

36 

60 

59 

98 

,      127 

136 

173 

219 

232 

ASSOUAN 

254 

262 

;                 ^ 

263 

,      283 

EGYPT   IN  1898. 


I. 

THE    IMPERIAL    HIGHWAY. 

THE    PENINSULAR    AND    ORIENTAL    EXPRESS  —  BRITISH    EMPIRE- 
BUILDERS THE    IMPERIAL    ENGLISHMAN  —  BRINDISI  —  THE 

MAIL -BAGS  —  A   P.    AND    O.    LINER  —  LASCARS  —  THE    GATE    OP 
THE   EAST. 

December  11. — Sun?  Not  much  sun  here. 
All  day  we  had  been  ploughing  hoarsely 
through  the  monotonous  prairie  called  France. 
Now  at  dusk  the  Peninsular  and  Oriental 
Express  stood  clammily  at  the  little  Alpine 
station  of  St  Jean  -  de  -  Something,  a  few 
minutes  from  the  frontier.  The  huge  cube  of 
mountain  above,  with  its  sparse  firs  showing 
on  the  table  atop,  like  people  on  the  Monu- 


2  THE    IMPERIAL    HIGHWAY. 

ment,  was  streaked  and  dappled  with  snow. 
On  either  side  of  the  track  tlie  snow  was 
piled  a  foot  deep.  As  the  two  upstanding 
mountain  -  engines  panted  and  snorted,  im- 
patient to  get  to  the  top  of  the  Mont  Cenis 
and  down  into  the  plain  again,  half-melting, 
half- caking  snow  dribbled  down  every  win- 
dow.    And  I  a  seeker  after  sun !     Ugh ! 

Kather  stay  and  be  frozen  in  one's  own 
country.  Yet  there  are  compensations  every- 
where, and  even  the  P.  and  0.  Express  chill- 
ing among  the  Alps  offered  an  experience 
with  its  own  peculiar  flavour.  There  was 
nothing  externally  in  the  three  long  sleeping 
and  dining  cars  and  three  luggage -vans  to 
mark  it  off  from  any  of  the  other  "  Grand 
European  Expresses  "  purveyed  by  the  Sleep- 
ing-Car  Company.  The  beds  were  the  same 
— less  comfortable  than  the  American  model, 
because  on  the  American  plan  you  have  a 
broad  bed,  and  can  undress  at  ease  in  the 
central  gangway  after  the  ladies  have  gone 
to  bed,  instead  of  being  boxed  up  in  a  four- 
berth  coop  with  luggage  rising  up  from  the 


WAGONS- LITS    FOOD.  3 

floor  till  it  threatens  to  submerge  the  whole. 
The  food  was  the  same — and  when  I  say  that 
it  was  the  Wagons-Lits  food,  I  say  all.  It 
is  a  class  of  nourishment  wholly  by  itself, 
whether  you  come  on  it  in  France,  or  Hun- 
gary, or  darkest  Turkey.  Some  like  it  and 
some  don't.     I  don't. 

The  brown-uniformed  attentive  attendants 
were  the  same  as  everywhere  —  except,  it 
suddenly  struck  you,  that  they  all  talked 
English.  They  all  talked  English — and  there 
you  got  the  clue  to  the  peculiar  character  of 
the  train.  It  was  altogether  an  English  train. 
So  far  it  had  not  embarked  a  single  passenger 
who  was  not  a  Briton.  And  their  trade  it 
was  not  difficult  to  see.  Fair-haired  and  blue- 
eyed,  square  -  shouldered  and  square -jawed, 
with  puckered  brows  and  steadfast  eyes  that 
seemed  to  look  outwards  and  inwards  at  the 
same  time,  self-contained,  self-controlled,  and 
self-reliant,  they  were  unmistakably  builders 
— British  empire  -  builders.  The  faces  of  the 
women  were  serene  with  the  imperturbable 
serenity  of  those   who  have  seen   too   many 


4  THE   IMPERIAL   HIGHWAY. 

strange  sights  to  be  surprised  now  at  any- 
thing; and  in  their  patient  aspect  was  a  hint 
of  the  trac^ic  heroism  that  sends  its  children 
to  be  brought  up  by  strangers  and  forget 
their  mothers. 

The  Empire  -  builders  were  going  forth  to 
their  long-  work  aoj'ain.  This  man  was  ooin<jf 
to  his  collectorship  in  the  Central  Provinces, 
that  to  his  tea  -  plantation  in  Assam.  This 
grey-haired  merchant  was  for  Brisbane ;  that 
pale-faced  lady  had  brought  home  her  chil- 
dren, and  was  hurrying  back  to  her  husband 
in  Hong  -  Kong.  The  ruddy  subaltern  was 
only  going  out  to  have  a  shot  for  the  Gip2)y 
army ;  but  the  jolly  little  man  in  a  wig  beside 
him  would  not  be  done  till  some  snail  of  a 
local  steamer,  after  many  changes,  dumped 
him  down  under  a  verandah  in  Manila.  To 
every  point  of  the  remotest  East  were  return- 
ing, quite  uncomplaining,  the  obscure  makers 
of  the  British  empire.  It  was  a  geography 
lesson  in  itself — and  remember  that  this  train 
leaves  London  every  Friday  night,  and  that 
its  freight  is  always  the  same.     Thinking  this, 


WHAT    '    BRITISH    EMPIRE       MEANS.  5 

you  saw  that  the  two  engines,  three  cars,  and 
three  vans  were  no  ordinary  train  after  all. 
They  were  a  very  vital  link  in  that  band  of 
scarlet  that  grips  the  world — the  British  em- 
pire. Thinking  of  the  load  of  heavy  hearts  it 
bore,  of  self-sacrifice,  of  single-eyed,  unques- 
tioning duty -doing,  you  began  for  the  hun- 
dredth time  to  say  that  you  never  before 
had  quite  realised  what  "British  empire" 
means. 

December  12. — Sun  !  I  felt  it  in  the  close- 
curtained  berth  before  ever  I  opened  my  eyes. 
When  I  did  open  them,  a  foot  below  the  car- 
roof,  little  yellow  beams  were  stabbing  through 
every  chink.  When  I  leapt  down  and  got  out 
into  the  corridor,  we  were  ripping  smoothly 
down  the  eastern  side  of  Italy.  The  sky  was 
blue — not  that  pale  irresolute  bluish,  but  blue 
— blue  all  over,  from  horizon  to  horizon,  with 
a  straightforward,  thick,  solid  blue,  as  if  it 
liked  it.  And  bathing  the  pale  grass,  shim- 
mering with  silver  on  the  olive-trees,  burnish- 
ing the  far  line  of  the  white-capped  Apennines, 
steeping  the  wooden  sides  of  the  train  and  the 


6    .  THE    IMPERIAL    HIGHWAY. 

starved  temperaments  of  its  passengers,  was 
the  blessed  sun.  On  our  left  was  the  Adriatic, 
and  all  day,  as  the  sun  warmed  it,  it  grew 
bluer  and  bluer.  The  sun  was  not  hot,  and 
the  leafless  trees  and  brown  fallows  forbade 
the  delusion  that  it  was  summer.  Yet  it  was 
honest,  uncompromising  sunshine  all  the  same, 
and  if  it  did  not  warm  the  body  very  much,  it 
thawed  the  spirit.  The  sun  of  the  south  is  a 
sensation  of  itself.  As  soon  as  it  shines  on 
you,  you  begin  to  feel  that  the  things  which 
brought  care  before  do  not  perhaps  matter  so 
very  much  after  all.  You  begin  insensibly  to 
alter  your  standards  of  the  importance  of  all 
things.  Time,  for  instance,  doesn't  matter ; 
trouble  does.  It  suddenly  strikes  you  what 
a  heavy,  clumsy  device  is  a  tobacco-pipe,  which 
needs  to  be  carried  about  in  a  pocket,  and  not 
merely  lit  but  filled.  How  much  simpler  and 
lig-hter  to  smoke  a  cic^arette !     That  change  in 

o  o  o 

your  British  strenuousness  symbolises  much. 

To  the  Imperial  Englishmen  in  the  train, 
also,  the  sun  was  welcome  ;  it  has  become  a 
second  climate.     Not  that  it  dispels  care  for 


THE    ENGLISHMAN    ABROAD.  7 

them.  But  no  sun  or  storm  can  shake  the 
steady  independence  of  the  British  character 
when  you  get  it  at  its  best.  This  was  to  be 
seen  in  little  things  during  the  long  day's  run 
down  Italy.  When  you  see  men  of  other 
nations  on  the  third  day  of  a  railway  journey, 
they  are  generally  unkempt  to  look  at  and 
unwholesome  to  sit  by.  The  precise,  imper- 
turbable. Imperial  Englishman  takes  off  all 
his  clothes,  and  goes  to  bed  cleanly  in  his 
pyjamas ;  he  bathes  standing  up,  and  shaves 
religiously  each  morning,  and  carefully  brushes 
his  clothes.  He  talks  little,  although  there 
is  a  freemasonry  about  the  smoking-room  of 
the  P.  and  O.  Express  which  melts  down 
great  part  of  his  native  reserve.  When  he 
does  talk,  it  is  not  of  money,  like  the  travel- 
ling American,  nor  of  beer  and  time-tables, 
like  the  traveling  German,  but  of  sport.  The 
foreigner  in  like  case  makes  talking  his  main 
business ;  the  Englishman  appears  to  throw 
out  his  talk  as  a  kind  of  afterthought  and 
accompaniment  to  smoking.  On  to  the  cloud 
of  tobacco  smoke  floats   occasionally  a  brief 


8  THE    TMrERFAL    TITGIIWAY. 

reminiscence  of  many  woodcock,  or  a  hint  to 
the  young  pig-sticker.  It  is  not  exactly  con- 
versation, and  it  is  not  at  all  wittily  put ;  but 
all  the  same,  if  you  do  happen  to  be  interested 
about  such  things,  you  perceive  that  the  man 
who  says  a  thing  usually  knows  what  he  is 
talking  about. 

As  the  sun  slanted  down  we  were  obviously 
drawing  near  Brindisi ;  the  whole  population 
of  the  Express  with  one  accord  began  to  write 
home.  The  letters  did  not  appear  to  run  very 
fluently,  and  were  probably  not  masterpieces 
of  literature.  But  they  were  letters  home, 
which  means  a  deal  more  to  the  EnMishman 
than  Shakespeare  and  Milton  will  ever  do — 
the  first  letters  home,  the  first,  it  was  pathetic 
to  think,  of  how  many!  It  was  pathetic  to 
wonder  how  many  of  these  taciturn,  decidedly 
uninspired,  all  but  commonplace  men  had  made 
themselves  widowers  and  childless  in  the  in- 
terests of  the  British  empire.  You  might 
wonder;  but  of  course  they  didn't  say  aiiv- 
tliing  about  it.  It  was  their  business,  and 
they  were  doing  it.     Duty  has  got  to  be  (lone 


BRINDISI. 


in  the  proper  place,  at  the  proper  time,  in 
spite  of  all  things.  Just  as  at  the  proper 
time  and  in  spite  of  all  things — a  standing 
rebuke  to  the  kingdom  of  Italy,  where  it  alone 
is  certain  and  punctual — the  Imperial  Express 
clanked  into  Brindisi. 

December  13. — Two  thousand  five  hundred 
mall-bags !  So  they  said ;  at  any  rate  there 
were  twenty-seven  railway  vans  of  them,  and 
it  took  nearly  five  hours  last  night  and  this 
morning  to  get  them  on  board.  As  I  sat  in 
the  smoking-room  about  ten,  wondering  when 
they  w^re  going  to  start,  I  heard  a  clatter 
and  bumping  outside,  and  went  to  look. 
Below  the  tall  liner  lay  the  broad  quay 
and  the  white  Italian  houses  of  Brindisi ; 
the  yellow  in  their  windows  looked  vulgar 
but  cheerful  beside  the  blue  moonlight  that 
bathed  everything  else.  And  up  an  enormous 
long  gangway  came  the  mails. 

An  endless  string  of  Lascars  brought  them. 
Shuffling  spectres  climbing  the  gangway  ; 
then  the  sudden  gleam  of  teeth  in  the 
moonlight ;    then,    one    by    one,    appeared    a 


10  THE    IMPERIAL    HriHWAY. 

solid  bag  and  a  solid  pair  of  brown  human 
legs    within    the    circle     of    electric    lamps, 
where   sat    the    officers    checking    each    bag. 
Under  the  bag  appeared  a  greasy  red  cloth  ; 
under  the  cloth  a  brown  grinning  face,  with 
its    features    all    cramped    together    in    the 
middle.     An  Ensflish  sailor  seized  each  Lascar 
as  he  came  up,  and  twisted  him  round  till  his 
bag's  name  was  under  the  light.     "  Sydney," 
cried     the    one    officer.      "  Sydney ;    right," 
answered   the  other   from   the   table.      Then 
the  chief  man  of  the  Lascars,  standing  by — 
magnificent  in  voluminous  red  turban,  portly 
blue  smock,  fat  cheeks,  and  whiskers — seized 
his  subordinate,  and  pushed  him  forward  in 
the   way  he   should   go :    the   little   wisp   of 
brown   ugliness  pattered  off,   faded  again  to 
a  spectre,  was  lost   in   the   darkness  of  the 
ship. 

Then  the  next  and  the  next ;  another 
and  another  and  another.  Sydney,  Bombay, 
Hong  -  Kong,  Queensland  vid  Melbourne, 
Queensland  vid  Torres  Straits,  Aden,  New 
Zealand,     Manila,     Beyrout,     King     George's 


THE    MAILS.  11 

Sound,  Penang,  and  Launceston.  Bags  on 
bags  of  Christmas  cards  and  New  Year's 
greetings  for  England  in  the  East ;  bags 
on  bags  of  business  and  affection  for  the 
new  Britain  on  the  other  side  of  the  world. 
On  and  on  they  came  endlessly — more  ghosts 
up  the  gangway,  more  teeth  gleaming  devil- 
ishly out  of  demon  faces,  more  dirty  legs 
staggering  into  the  lamplight  under  more 
mail-bags.  Some  were  passed  off  one  way, 
some  another,  till  you  would  have  said  the 
ship  would  split  asunder  and  bleed  mail-bags 
all  over  the  Adriatic.  And  still  up,  up  they 
came.  Are  we  not  on  the  main  highway  of 
the  British  empire  ? 

December  I4.. — I  had  always  imagined  a 
liner  of  the  P.  and  O.  as  something  peculiarly 
stately  and  luxurious — the  lawful  heir  of  the 
old  East  Indiaman.  There  is  something  in 
the  very  name  "  Peninsular  and  Oriental" 
that  fills  the  ear  and  imagination.  I  was 
a  trifle  disappointed  at  first  to  find  the 
Britannia  only  a  ship  after  all.  I  did  not 
expect  her  to  be   fast ;   P.    and   0.   steamers 


12  THE    IMPERIA.     HIGHWAY. 

are  not  fast,  and  somehow  one  feels  that  it 
would  be  flippancy  to  ask  them  to  be.  In 
war-time,  one  feels  sure,  the  cruising-  enemy 
will  remember  that  the  P.  and  0.  is  the 
oldest  line  east  of  Suez,  and  draw  aside  and 
dip  his  ensign  as  the  subsidised  slug  crawls 
by.  But  it  was  rather  painful  to  find  the 
smoking  -  room  about  half  the  size  of  an 
Atlantic  liner's,  and  decorated  with  green 
tiles  that  recalled  bedroom  suites  in  Totten- 
ham Court  Koad.  The  table,  again,  was  not 
what  the  letters  P.  and  0.  had  seemed  to 
promise.  That,  at  least,  is  the  way  I  put 
it :  older  travellers  gloomily  said  it  was  just 
what  they  expected.  I  have  eaten  far  better  on 
dirty  little  tubs  of  the  Messageries  Maritimes 
and  Florio-Rubattino.  Brawn  is  a  very  diffi- 
cult viand  to  get  really  bad  ;  but  such  musty 
brawn  as  exists  on  the  world's  markets  seemed 
to  have  been  cornered  by  the  cook  of  the 
Britannia.^ 


'  Since  this  was  written,  I  am  told,  the  P.  and  0.  has  sent 
an  inspector  to  inspect  its  food.  So  that  possibly  the  brawn  is 
better  now,  and  tliese  criticisms  out  of  date. 


LIFE    ON    A    P.  AND    O.  13 

Yet  the  P.  and  0.  grows  on  you  ;  even  In 
two  days  it  grows  on  you.  There  is  some- 
thing stately  about  it,  after  all ;  and  it  is 
very  English,  to  boot,  and  very  picturesque. 
The  ship  is  not  a  ferry-boat,  like  an  Atlantic 
liner,  but  something  between  a  hotel  and  a 
home.  It  is  even  more  miraculously  clean 
than  other  ships.  The  ojBficers  are  point 
device  in  their  smartness  and  courtesy ;  the 
very  stewards  have  something  of  the  grand 
manner  of  good  servants.  You  dress  de- 
corously for  dinner,  and  your  cabin  gives 
you  plenty  of  room  to  dress  in.  You  begin 
to  realise  that  you  are  going  to  a  part  of 
the  world  where  your  people  are  sahibs,  to 
be  treated  as  such,  and  to  behave  as  such ; 
and  then  you  see  it  would  be  hardly  fitting 
for  the  P.  and  O.  to  scurry  along  at  twenty- 
two  knots  an  hour. 

Then  there  is  the  family  aspect  of  the  ship, 
which  conveys  an  impression  of  stability. 
There  are  babies  with  nurses — not  in  them- 
selves objects  of  delight,  but  interesting 
because  of  the  wonderful  destiny  that  makes 


14  THE    IMPERIAL   HIGHWAY. 

them  at  home  half  round  the  world  before 
they  know  right  hand  from  left.  When  the 
mothers  bring  the  babies  up  on  to  the  pro- 
menade-deck you  get  an  illustration  of  the 
continuity  of  the  British  empire, — continuity 
in  space,  and  continuity  in  time.  These 
toddling  nuisances  are  quite  at  home  at  sea. 
With  many  it  is  not  their  first  voyage,  nor 
their  second.  They  are  quite  at  home ;  their 
home  from  birth  up  is  the  world,  wherever 
there  may  be  work  to  do.  Many  of  them, 
you  know,  will  go  on  living  till  they  die 
on  ships  and  in  queer  torrid  corners  of  the 
world.  They  will  die  earlier  than  we  stay- 
at  -  homes,  as  their  fathers  and  mothers, 
grandfathers  and  grandmothers,  will  have 
died  before  them.  But  they  will  not  die, 
we  hope,  till  they  have  got  other  infants 
to  make  themselves  a  nuisance  about  pro- 
menade-decks ;  and,  die  soon  or  late,  it  is 
odds  on  their  having  done  a  decent  bit  of 
work  for  their  country  and  themselves. 

The  Lascars  are  another  text  for  a  little 
sermon  on  the  importance  of  being  English. 


THE   LASCAR.  15 

They    are   not   beautiful,    and   they    are    not 
what  you  were  brought  up  to  consider  able- 
bodied  seamen.     They  appear  to  need  almost 
as   many    white    men   to    tell  them  what  to 
do,   and  to  push  them  into  the  proper  posi- 
tions   to    do    it,    as   would   more   easily   get 
through   the  work  themselves.     Every  after- 
noon they  do  boat -drill  :    that  is  to   say,   a 
white  quartermaster  and  their  own  leader  put 
ten  of  them  into  position  in  a  boat,  and  two 
are  ready  to  lower  away  aft.     It  still  wants 
two   to  lower   forward,   so   the   head   Lascar 
goes  off  to  find  them.     He  is  so  long  away 
that  the  quartermaster  goes  off  to  find  him ; 
then   the  Lascar  comes  back  with  his  two ; 
and  presently  the  quartermaster  comes  with 
other  two,  and  two  are  sent  away,  and  two 
are   fallen   in   with   the   four,    and   instantly 
dismissed  again,   and  thank   goodness   that's 
over,  and  that's  the  sort   of  sailors  Lascars 
are.      People  say  their   great  merit  is   that 
they   are   quiet,    and   give   no   trouble ;    and 
they  are  fit  enough,  after  all,  to  sweep  decks 
and  stretch  out  awnings.     They  never  looked 


16  THE    IMPERIAL    HIGHWAY. 

qfuite  so  picturesque  again  after  that  first 
night,  as  they  brought  in  the  mail  -  bags. 
But  they  finish  off  the  picture  of  the  empire- 
builders  and  the  Imperial  highway.  They 
are  a  specimen  of  the  raw  material.  Their 
very  ugliness  and  stupidity  furnish  just  the 
point.  It  is  because  there  are  people  like 
this  in  the  world  that  there  is  an  Imperial 
Britain.  This  sort  of  creature  has  to  be 
ruled,  so  we  rule  him,  for  his  good  and  our 
own. 

December  15. — To-day,  for  the  first  time, 
we  woke  up  rolling  out  of  sight  of  land. 
The  day  before  yesterday  it  was  the  brown 
slopes  of  the  Ionian  Islands,  with  the  snowy 
backbone  of  Greece  behind  them.  Yesterday 
it  was  Crete  —  steeper  brown  slopes  again 
tipped  with  a  range  of  snow ;  and  seeing 
Crete  one  long  tangle  of  impossible  moun- 
tains from  west  to  east,  you  began  to  come 
to  some  comprehension  of  the  immortality  of 
the  Cretan  question.  But  alike  yesterday 
and  the  day  before  and  to-day  we  have  run 
all  day  under  an    arch    of  blue.     Each    day 


NEARING    EGYPT.  IV 

the  blue  has  grown  richer  and  more  solid. 
Each  day  the  sun  has  shed  himself  upon  us 
more  lavishly.  We  have  let  him  soak  in 
and  in,  till  to-day  English  winter  is  already 
cleansed  from  the  system.  For,  by  now. 
We  are  well  in  the  south  of  the  Levant ;  we 
are  already  within  touch  of  Egypt.  The 
day's  run  left  twenty  -  three  knots  more  to 
go  ;  at  noon,  and  by  lunch  -  time,  we  could 
hardly  be  more  than  eight  or  nine  away — 
and  yet  no  sign  of  it.  Three-quarters  of  an 
hour  for  lunch,  and  we  must  be  tumbling 
over  it— yet  still  no  sign.  But,  yes ;  there 
on  the  starboard  bow !  There  is  a  group  of 
dust  -  coloured  houses,  with  a  light  tower, 
quite  close,  not  a  mile  away. 

Only  it  seems  to  be  standing  on  nothing, 
in  the  middle  of  the  sea.  To  port  and  star- 
board is  still  blue  sea — nothing  else  at  all. 
We  are  getting  much  closer  now,  and  we 
see  two  low  dust-coloured  breakwaters  push- 
ing their  snouts  through  the  same  blue  sea. 
Then  some  shipping  near  the  houses  —  only 
still    no    coast  -  line.      The    houses    are    Port 

B 


18 


THE   IMPERIAL   HIGHWAY. 


Said ;  the  breakwaters  are  the  Suez  Canal ; 
and  the  land  which  you  cannot  see  is  ancient 
Egypt,  the  cradle  of  human  life.  You  seem 
to  have  arrived  at  nowhere.  None  the  less, 
along  the  Imperial  highway,  we  have  now 
come  to  the  gate  of  the  East. 


Boats  racing  to  a  ship. 


19 


n. 


PORT   SAID. 

AN  UNHOLY  RITUAL — A  GREAT  COALING-STATION — A  LEVANTINE 
PARADISE  —  THE  GRIEVANCES  OF  PORT  SAID  —  A  WAITING 
TOWN — THE   MORALS   OF   A   PORT   OF   CALL. 

December  16. — As  we  brought  up  at  Port 
Said  I  cast  a  casual  glance  to  starboard,  and 
saw  that  we  were  attached  by  cables  to  what 
looked  like  a  black  island  in  mid- Canal.  I 
took  no  heed  of  it ;  but,  looking  that  way  a 
moment  later,  saw  it  had  drawn  nearer.  It 
seemed  a  great  black  raft,  slowly  warping 
itself  nearer  and  nearer,  and  on  it — what  was 
moving  ? — by  the  Powers,  they  were  men  1 

Men  they  were,  and  the  raft  was  an  enor- 
mous coal  -  lighter ;  only  which  was  coal  and 
which  was  lig'hter  and  which  were  men  was 
more  than  anybody  could  say.     So  black  a  crew 


20  PORT    SAID. 

it  carried,  swarming  like  flies  on  a  treacle-jar, 
on  every  inch  of  foothold  to  the  water's  edge. 
They  seemed  to  wear  shirt  and  drawers  and  a 
rag  round  the  head  ;  but,  again,  which  was 
clothes  and  which  was  man  ?  Clothes  and 
skin  were  both  grimed  the  same  black  with 
coal-dust.  As  they  approached  they  set  up  a 
kind  of  wailing  chant,  and  the  white  teeth 
flashing  out  were  the  only  part  of  all  the  raft 
that  was  not  coal-black.  Once  more  I  was 
looking  at  a  crew  of  devils  going  through 
some  unholy  ritual  of  their  devilry.  Only  the 
devilish-looking  Lascars  at  Brindisi  had  been 
working  in  half-light  and  shadow ;  on  these 
the  high  sun  shone  drily  ;  everything  round 
was  refulgent,  except  that  one  murky  blot  on 
the  water.  Slowly  and  slowly,  but  nearer 
and  nearer,  howling  ar>d  grinning,  naked  and 
black — till  you  thought  the  Canal  must  have 
opened  and  let  up  the  sooty  monster  straight 
out  of  the  Pit. 

As  the  thing  drew  to  the  ship's  side  they 
heaved  up  four  huge  planks,  two  forward  and 
two  aft  of  the  lighter,  to  the  level  of  the  high 


LASCARS    AGAIN.  21 

main-deck.  And  the  moment  they  were  in 
position  —  before,  you  would  have  said,  the 
tottering  bridges  could  possibly  be  stable — 
the  devils  had  paused  in  their  incantations, 
and  got  to  work.  Up  the  dizzy  plank  they 
came,  tottering  under  rush -baskets  piled  up 
with  coal.  The  slope  was  half  perpendicular, 
and  the  planks  were  narrow,  and  some  of  the 
demons  carried  one  basket  on  the  head,  and 
another  in  the  arms.  But  they  never  slipped  : 
their  naked  feet  gripping  the  wood,  one  after 
another  pattered  up  and  plunged  into  the 
bowels  of  the  ship.  They  still  kept  up  their 
rising,  falling  lullaby,  as  one,  two,  three,  half- 
a-dozen  sprang  on  board,  and  hurried  his 
freight  into  the  bunkers.  In  a  minute  there 
was  a  complete  chain  of  them,  two  rows  trip- 
ping up  with  full  baskets,  two  rows  tripping 
down  with  empties.  In  the  body  of  the 
lighter  another  gang  of  demons  was  hacking, 
and  delving,  and  shovelling.  More  baskets 
leaping  up  full,  more  bounding  down  empty, 
more  tilting,  more  lilting,  more  dust.  This 
dust     rose     up    round    them    in    a    choking 


22  PORT    SAID. 

cloud.  And  as  I  went  ashore  the  last  of 
it  was  a  rolling  pillar  of  blackness  against 
the  ship's  side,  and,  dimly  seen  through  it, 
a  racing  chain  of  devils  up  and  down,  with 
a  forlorn  and  melancholy  croon,  working  out 
the  tale  of  their  damnation. 

Dccemher  17. — That  melodramatic  sight,  I 
learn,  is  Port  Said.  That  is  just  the  essence 
and  root  of  being  of  Port  Said.  Port  Said  is 
coal — the  Clapham  Junction  of  nations,  the 
gate  of  East  and  West,  the  coaling-station  of 
the  world.  Its  native  population  is  all  made 
of  coal  -  porters,  and  those  that  minister  to 
them ;  its  EurojDeans  are  in  coal  companies 
or  connected  with  ships  that  need  coaling. 
A  million  tons  a  -  year  is  the  figure  of  Port 
Said's  coal  -  bill.  It  nearly  all  comes  from 
Wales,  and  what  does  not  comes  from  New- 
castle ;  but  in  the  main  ships  will  burn  noth- 
ing but  Ocean  Merthyr.  Pesidents  in  Port 
Said  expatiate  on  the  beauties  of  Ocean 
Merthyr  for  domestic  purposes  also ;  but 
though  I  am  quite  ready  to  take  their  ex- 
pert opinion  about  sun,  I  stick  to  my  own 


COAL-LIGHTERS.  23 

about  winter  firing.  "  I  wish  I  could  show 
you  a  fire  of  it  now,"  said  one  to  me ;  "  but 
we  haven't  a  fire  going  to-day  : "  now  what 
can  a  man  who  has  no  fire  on  December  17 
know  about  house  coals  ? 

The  ships'  coal  lies  stored  for  the  most  part 
in  the  lighters,  whence  it  is  to  be  put  aboard 
the  vessels ;  it  would  not  pay  for  landing. 
One  firm  alone,  the  Port  Said  and  Suez  Coal 
Company,  has  lighter  accommodation  for  7000 
tons  at  a  time.  And  how  astoundingly  well 
the  porter-demons  can  do  their  work  is  shown 
by  the  records  of  the  same  company  for  coal- 
inof  the  P.  and  0.  Caledonia.  On  December 
11,  1894,  they  put  on  board  602  tons  in  70 
min.  ;  on  January  21,  1895,  628  tons  in  75 
min. ;  on  March  31,  812  tons  in  100  min.; 
on  December  22,  915  tons  in  110  min.  This 
is  all  comfottably  over  eight  tons  a  minute 
— and  the  labourers  do  it  on  just  a  trifle 
over  nothing  a-day ! 

That,  as  I  say,  is  Port  Said — and  there  is 
nothing  else.  It  is  no  wonder  you  do  not  see 
the  land  as  you  approach  it ;  there  is  no  land 


24  PORT    SAID. 

to  see.  The  town  lies  on  a  little  triangle  of 
sand  between  the  Canal  and  the  salt  swamps 
that  fringe  the  Delta  of  the  Nile.  Until  the 
Canal  was  cut,  there  was  nothing  there  but 
birds'  nests.  Now  there  is  a  town  of  35,000 
souls — 10,000  of  them  Europeans,  if  you  in- 
clude Greeks,  and  5000  of  these  respectable, 
if  you  do  not  press  the  word  too  far.  The 
people  are  of  every  race  and  tongue  known, 
for  Port  Said  is  Levantine  of  the  Levantines. 

From  my  window  it  looks  a  Levantine 
paradise.  I  can  see  down  a  row  of  well- 
built,  cool  -  plastered,  three  -  storey ed  houses, 
with  white  and  French-grey  window-shutters, 
clean -painted  iron  verandahs,  and  balconies 
on  each  storey.  Below  a  thick  carpet  of 
acacias,  starred  with  yellow  pods  as  big  as  a 
big  broad  bean,  hides  the  street.  Even  in 
the  Arab  quarter  the  houses  are  all  of  them 
fairly  new  and  most  of  them  tolerably  clean  ; 
they  are  not  humped  together  as  in  older 
Eastern  towns.  A  town,  you  see  from  Port 
Said,  can  be  Levantine  and  yet  clean  and 
airy ;    the    streets,   moreover,   are   well    kept, 


SHIPS    BUT    NO    TEADE.  25 

level,  and  broad,  and  there  are  quaint  little 
foot-gauge,  one-mule  tramways.  Altogether, 
you  would  say,  a  well-built,  well-ordered, 
well-liking  little  town. 

But  Port  Said  is  not  at  all  happy.  It 
owes  its  all  to  the  Canal,  but  it  has  a  notion 
that  the  Canal  owes  it  more  yet.  Besides 
the  coal,  and  the  transhipment,  and  a  little 
provisioning,  Port  Said  has  no  trade  at  all. 
A  twentieth  part  of  its  coal  goes  away  to 
Damietta,  mostly  as  dust-and-clay  briquettes 
for  cotton  -  mills  ;  but  what  is  that  ?  Port 
Said  feels  that  it  ought  to  be  the  great  port 
of  Egypt.  And  so  it  ought,  surely  ;  for  where 
the  ships  are,  there,  on  paper,  ought  the  trade 
to  be.  The  million  tons  a -year  has  to  go 
away  empty  from  Port  Said,  to  Alexandria  or 
the  Black  Sea  or  anywhere  it  can,  to  get  a 
cargo  to  carry  home  again.  If  only  the 
Government  would  allow  a  proper  railway 
connection  with  Cairo  and  the  interior.  Port 
Said  would  be  the  port  of  Egypt  at  once,  as 
Alexandria  is  and  Damietta  was.  "  Buy  land 
in  Port  Said,"  said  an  ancient  resident ;  "and 


26  PORT   SAID. 

you  will  be  a  rich  man  at  sixty."  It  may  be 
so,  tlioui^h  for  myself  I  am  not  ricb  enough  at 
present  to  set  the  process  going.  But  in  any 
case  the  Government  hesitates  to  ruin  Alex- 
andria ;  so  there  is  only  a  sort  of  steam- 
tramway  as  far  as  Ismailia,  where  it  joins 
the  Suez-Cairo  Railway. 

Another  queer  grievance  of  Port  Said's  own 
is  the  electric  light.  You  would  not  have 
thought  that  the  electric  light  would  fill  a 
whole  town  with  lamentation ;  but  it  has. 
For  some  ten  years  it  has  enabled  ships  to 
go  through  the  Canal  by  night.  Before  that 
every  passing  vessel  had  to  lie  the  night  at 
Port  Said,  and  those  were  the  days  —  or 
nights — of  cafe  concert,  and  roulette -table, 
and  dancing-saloon,  bands  crashing  from  dusk 
to  dawn,  and  gold  flowing  in  torrents  into  the 
lap  of  Port  Said.  In  those  nights  a  second- 
engineer  could  start  out  with  sixpence  in  his 
pocket,  and  come  back  at  sunrise  with  five 
hundred  pounds  in  his  pocket  and  a  knife  in 
his  side.  Now  all  that  is  gone.  The  shop- 
keepers and  pimps  have  only  a  brief  sunshine 


PAST    AND   FUTURE.  27 

to  get  their  hay  in  while  the  demons  coal 
ship ;  and  the  faster  the  demons  coal,  the 
faster  the  money  is  aboard  again  and  hull- 
down  out  of  sight  of  Port  Said. 

So  Port  Said  is  waiting — one  eye  regret- 
fully on  the  golden,  riotous  past,  one  eye 
dubiously  on  the  golden  industrious  future. 
It  would  be  wonderful  if  it  were  not  unhappy. 
It  is  on  the  road  to  everywhere,  and  yet  it  is 
on  the  road  to  nowhere.  Ships  pass  every 
day  for  every  sea  and  port  in  the  world — 
except  Port  Said.  On  its  Asiatic  side  is  the 
raw  Arabian  Desert.  If  you  start  to  take  a 
walk  on  the  African  side  you  bring  up  against 
a  sopping  shoal — a  little  salt  water  and  then 
a  little  sand,  a  basin  of  water  and  then  a 
bar  of  sand,  sand  and  water,  water  and  sand, 
stretching  dismally  flat  as  far  as  you  can  see. 
There  are  a  few  trees  in  the  town,  but  hardly 
a  garden,  and  never  a  rood  of  green  field  ;  they 
turn  out  their  beasts  on  the  beach.  There  are 
no  sights,  no  amusements,  no  society ;  every- 
body is  saving  his  money  for  a  summer  some- 
where else.     Individuals  are  waiting  as  well 


28  PORT    SAID. 

as  the  town — waiting  to  be  sent  somewhere 
else.  So  they  preserve  then-  packing-cases 
carefully  marked  with  the  household  effects 
that  go  inside  them,  and  purvey  coal. 

December  18. — One  moment,  you  will  say. 
I  am  leaving  out  the  one  great  distinction  of 
Port  Said,  am  I  not  ?  You  expected  a  few 
telling  particulars  about  its  abysmal  vice. 
Well,  its  abysmal  vice  does  not  exist.  Or, 
to  be  quite  correct,  it  exists,  but  only  for 
export.  When  I  landed  I  blushed  to  be  a 
human  being ;  little  brown-faced  caricatures 
of  Egyptian  monuments  caught  my  coat  at 
every  step,  lisping  half-English  invitations  to 
every  named  and  unnamed  indecency.  But 
the  next  day  I  walked  down  the  same  streets 
utterly  unnoticed.  Port  Said  has  its  dark 
relaxations,  but  hardly  more,  nowadays,  than 
any  other  port  of  call.  The  old  days  of  its 
youth,  M^hen  it  was  the  sink  of  two  worlds, 
when  you  were  knifed  in  the  street,  when 
every  white  woman  was  a  light  o'  love,  and 
every  white  man  a  bully  —  they  are  gone. 
Port  Said  to-day  is  just  coal  and  boredom. 


29 


III. 

IN    SEARCH    OF   THE   EAST. 

THE  CANAL — ISMAILIA — THE  EAST  AND  THE  LEVANT — SUEZ — 
SEYID  MOHAMMED  MUSTAPHA — AN  ARAB  MUSIC-HALL — PORT 
TEWFIK — THE   CANAL   REVENUES — A   FEAST   OP   COLOUR. 

December  19. — One  lazy,  irrecoverable  day 
I  had  spent  in  the  bawling  streets  of  Port 
Said,  waiting  for  a  ship  to  take  me  down 
the  Canal  to  Suez.  Liner,  freighter,  or 
dredger,  it  was  all  one  to  me,  if  only  some- 
thin^'-  that  could  float  would  let  me  aboard  ; 
only,  of  course,  ships  came  up  and  up,  and 
none  went  down.  So  this  morning  I  rose 
up  betimes,  wasted  no  minutes  in  the  usual 
mosquito  -  hunt,  and  got  me  to  the  shed 
which  Port  Said  calls  railway  station.  The 
little  toy  train  of  the  Suez  Canal  Company 
was    just    thinking   of  starting   for   Tsmailia ; 


30  IN    SEARCH    OF    THE    EAST. 

after  all,  I  could  see  the  famous  Canal 
from  that. 

I  did  see  the  famous  Canal.  For  three 
hours  the  train  -  tram  never  went  out  of  a 
walk,  and  all  the  time  I  saw  the  Canal. 
Never,  I  suppose,  has  any  single  work  of 
man  upset  the  balance  of  the  world  like 
the  Suez  Canal ;  it  has  made  and  unmade 
men,  cities,  nations.  But  to  look  at,  it  is 
just  a  narrow  ditch  cut  through  a  sheer 
wilderness  of  sand.  On  the  Asiatic  side  the 
brown  desert  stretches  away  flat,  empty, 
endless.  On  the  Egyptian  a  narrow  ribbon 
strives  to  relieve  the  aching  barrenness  with 
a  little  green.  A  ditch  of  sweet  water  runs 
between  Canal  and  railway,  and  with  its 
aid  a  few  dwarf  trees  and  bushes  struofale 
above  ground ;  but.  oven  so,  they  attain 
only  to  grey,  not  green.  The  Suez  Canal 
goes  on  mile  after  mile,  unbending,  through 
desolation. 

The  same  white  and  red  buoys  mark  the 
central  channel ;  you  pass  the  same  grey, 
patient  dredgers,  scooping  up  silt  and  spew- 


ISMAILIA. 


Incr  It  out,  along  what  looks  like  a  section 
of  a  broken  suspension  bridge,  into  its 
mother  desert  again.  An  ocean  steamer 
hardly  seems  to  move,  for  it  must  make 
no  wash,  lest  the  banks  fall  in ;  it  looks 
as  if  it  had  strayed  into  a  place  too  small 
for  it,  as  a  trout  might  look  in  a  gold-fish 
vase,  and  could  not  find  its  way  out  again. 
The  stations  you  pass  are  the  abodes  of 
the  Canal  officials,  and  nothing  else.  A 
few  palms  and  cactus  show  above  their 
compounds  ;  a  few  natives  light  the  eye 
with  a  blaze  of  blue,  and  yellow,  and  crim- 
son garments.  But  the  desert  runs  up  to 
the  very  fence ;  that  past,  you  are  trudging 
the  dead  sand  again. 

At  length  far  off",  as  the  Canal  widens  to 
a  blue  lake,  you  see  a  mass  of  dark  green. 
It  is  too  big  for  a  Suez  Company  bungalow: 
it  is  Ismailia.  Pick  your  way  through  the 
black  veils  of  women  and  amber  caftans  of 
children,  who  sit  peacefully  on  the  platform 
as  in  a  waiting  -  room  —  and  then  you  can 
refresh     your     starved     eye     with     greenery 


32  IN    SEARCH    OF   THE    EAST. 

indeed.  Ismailia  is  all  groves  of  yellow- 
beaned  acacia -trees — the  dust -brown  stems 
twining  bare  and  serpentine  below,  the 
leaves  weaving  into  a  thick  canopy  over- 
head. From  walled  gardens  droop  many 
dowers — white  stars,  scarlet  buttons,  purple 
cups.  It  is  a  little  French  town,  well  laid 
out,  symmetrical,  trim.  It  is  almost  too 
symmetrical,  too  trim  to  be  real ;  it  looks 
like  a  model  Egyptian  town,  ready  to  go 
on  tour.  You  could  almost  fancy  yourself 
at  Earl's  Court — except  for  the  emptiness  oi 
it.  It  was  built  on  the  new  Canal  to  be  a 
thriving  town,  a  bathing  resort,  the  half- 
way house  to  Cairo,  But  now  it  is  only  a 
place  where  you  lunch  on  the  way  from 
Port  Said  to  Cairo ;  it  precariously  supports 
a  small  population  of  railway  porters.  Is- 
mailia is  almost  as  dead  as  the  desert. 

It  was  a  relief  when  the  train  came  in  for 
Suez.  Up  to  now  all  I  had  seen  was  not  the 
East,  but  the  Levant :  certainly  the  Levant 
has  a  charm  of  its  own,  but  at  Suez,  they  told 
me,  I  should  find  the  real  East.     We  rumbled 


In  a  courtyard. 

c 


THE    EAST    AT    LAST.  35 

off  through  the  drifting  sandhills  ;  presently 
they  opened,  and  we  came  into  a  stretch  of 
land,  with  palm -groves  and  a  broad,  sweet- 
water  canal,  and  cultivation  ;  but  dusk  fell  too 
fast  to  see  what  it  was.  And  a  little  after  it 
was  only  too  certain  that  we  were  ploughing 
the  sands  again.  But  at  last  I  saw  lights 
ahead — many  lights — and  we  were  crawling 
along  broad  streets  with  low,  square -roofed 
houses.  Then  a  gabbling  crowd  bearing  huge 
lamps  with  the  names  of  hotels  on  them. 
None  of  your  gold -laced  dragomans  or  red- 
lettered  porters  for  Suez — ^just  a  half-dressed 
runner  with  a  big  lantern. 

Now  at  last  I  was  in  the  East.  I  gave 
my  bag  joyfully  to  a  white  -  capped,  white 
night-gowned,  bare-footed,  chocolate-coloured 
boy,  and  stepped  forth.  Another  figure  met 
me  at  the  gate — just  such  another  Oriental, 
and  addressed  me.  Alas,  in  English  !  "  Want 
a  donkey,  sir  ;  ride  round  -  a  -  town  ?  "  It 
was  pitch  dark,  so  I  said  I  didn't.  "Yes, 
sir ;  you  want  donkey,"  he  insisted ;  *'  good 
donkey,     sir,     this     donkey  —  good     Jubile;" 


36 


IN   SEARCH   OF   THE   EAST. 


And    I 


thinking 


I    was    in    the 


donkey." 
East ! 

And  on  the  door  of  my  bedroom  I  found 
my  first  Egyptian  inscription.  It  was  partly 
defaced  and   evidently  very  old,  but  I  could 


reconstruct  the  whole  of  it :  "  Travellers  are 
informed  that  the  proprietor  is  only  respon- 
sible of  values  or  things  who  are  personally 
confided  to  him." 

December  20. — After  dinner  I  walked  out 


AN    ELOQUENT    DRAGOMAN.  37 

to  see  what  I  could  see  of  Suez.  Presently  I 
came  up  to  a  huge  many -lighted  house  whence 
pealed  the  joyous  notes  of  "  'E  dunno  where 
'e  are."  I  learned  afterward  that  this  was 
the  office  of  the  Eastern  Telegraph  Company, 
which  furnishes  nearly  all  the  English  popula- 
tion of  Suez ;  but  at  the  time  I  wondered  if  it 
was  public  and  I  might  go  in.  As  I  stood 
dubious  in  the  dark,  a  neat  tweed-suited  man 
in  a  tarhush — the  Egyptian  for  fez — strolled 
up  and  addressed  me.  I  understood  no  word, 
yet  it  sounded  familiar ;  where  had  I  heard 
that  language  before  ?  Then  suddenly  it  all 
came  back  to  me ;  he  was  talking  Dragomanese. 
It  is  a  language  I  speak  very  well,  and  I  en- 
tered eagerly  into  conversation. 

As  is  the  wont  of  dragomans,  he  began  with 
a  brief  summary  of  his  past  life.  His  name 
was  Seyid  Mohammed  Mustapha ;  he  was  a 
native  of  Suez,  and  his  age  was  twenty-five. 
He  had  been  three  years  with  an  Italian  gen- 
tleman inside  Massowah,  Red  Sea,  every  place 
between  him  togfether.  "I  ^o  between  that 
gentleman  together,  three  days'  walking  all 


38  IN    SEARCH    OF   THE    EAST. 

together,  get  alongside  one  place  in  that  coun- 
try, look  round  the  corner,  see  if  those  people 
go  all  in  one  line  together,  come  all  round 
Massowah." 

The  translation  of  this  is,  that  he  had  been 
interpreter  to  an  Italian  officer,  and  had  ac- 
companied him  in  a  reconnoitring  expedition 
inland.  The  rest  of  his  harrowing  adventures 
on  that  occasion  I  forbear  to  tell ;  that  history 
was  not  his  strong  point  I  gathered  from  his 
account  of  Moses.  "  Mozzes,"  as  he  called 
him,  in  connection  with  a  well  he  wished  me 
to  visit,  "  he  was  one  man — you  not  know 
'im,  sir  ? — one  officer,  four,  five  hundred  years 
before,  come  between  his  regiment  together, 
all  in  one  line,  see  if  no  water  there.  So  this 
regiment,  sir,  angry  from  this  Mozzes." 

But  if  he  was  a  weak  historian,  Seyid  Mo- 
hammed Mustapha  was  a  true  philosopher. 
"Two  things,"  quoth  he,  "are  more  best  as 
any  other  thing  ;  one  to  keep  three,  four  yards 
from  one  woman — every  woman.  I  bin  every- 
where ;  I  know  everything ;  I  know  when  one 
man  not  go  near  one  woman,  he  feel  beautiful 


A   MIXED    AUDIENCE.  39 

and  fine,  strong  for  himself.  One  other  thing. 
When  I  go  to  our  mosque,  I  sit  by  the  sheikh, 
and  he  say,  '  God  say.  Keep  one  eye  on  poor 
man  all  the  time — very  nice.'  " 

The  devout  misogynist  took  me  to  an  Arab 
music-hall ;  I  can  hear  the  jangle  and  drone 
of  it  in  my  ears  still.  Really,  it  was  only  a 
double  shop — blue  and  bluff  plaster -walled, 
cigarette  -  stump  floored,  furnished  with  a 
coffee  apparatus  and  benches.  At  one  end 
were  the  performers,  squatting  on  a  divan- 
platform,  raised  about  six  feet ;  in  front  of  it 
was  a  deal  rail,  with  a  row  of  'candles  stuck 
on  to  it  by  their  own  grease.  The  audience 
was  a  jostling  mass  of  every  type  and  every 
colour,  except  flesh-colour.  The  modern  Egyp- 
tian is  crossed,  they  say,  between  Arab  and 
ancient  Egyptian  or  Copt,  with  a  dash  of 
negroid  Nubian  thrown  in.  The  faces  of  these 
people  illustrated  the  process — yellow,  copper- 
coloured,  brick -red,  chocolate,  brown,  black. 
There  a  frank,  thick-lipped,  flat-nosed,  woolly- 
haired  nigger  ;  there  an  oval  -  faced,  high  - 
cheeked  Arab,  white  eyeballs  gleaming  out  of 


40  IN    SEARCH    OF   THE   EAST. 

his  dust -dark  face  and  black  hood  ;  next  to 
him  a  chocolate,  round-cheeked,  small- featured, 
genuine  Egyptian  mummy. 

But  however  different  they  looked,  they  all 
enjoyed  themselves  vastly.  Especially  when 
there  came  in  a  lady  dressed  in  a  crimson 
velvet  gown,  with  a  brown  skin  Insertion  just 
below  the  waist,  bangles  on  her  ankles,  many 
gold  chains,  and  a  huge  silver  watch  round 
her  neck,  and  began  to  dance.  The  band 
struck  up — three  men  twanging  strings,  two 
women  and  two  children  lifting  up  a  loud 
nasal  chant.  The  music,  to  my  ear,  was  one 
phrase  over  and  over  and  over  again ;  the 
dance,  to  my  eye,  a  very  slow  methodical 
waggling  of  the  belly,  doubtless  difficult  to 
produce,  but  interesting  mainly  to  the  anat- 
omist. But  the  yellow,  and  brown,  and  black 
faces  went  broad  with  grins,  and  their  applause 
rose  tumultuously  above  the  screech  of  the 
smallest  singer. 

Next  a  young  man  put  on  a  pantomime 
mask  representing  a  bull's  head,  in  which 
guise  he  performed  shuffles  for  about  three- 


THE    FUN    GROWS    FURIOUS.  41 

quarters  of  a  minute.  He  was  salvoed  with 
applause,  whereat  he  at  once  passed  round  the 
head.  On  this  there  came  in  a  stout  young 
man  with  the  face  of  a  Roman  emperor,  only 
darker.  "  That  very  rich  man,"  whispered 
Seyid  with  enthusiasm  ;  "  see  what  clothes  he 
wear ! "  At  first  sight  he  appeared  to  wear 
only  an  old  ulster  and  a  greasy  turban ;  but 
closer  scrutiny  indicated  him  as  the  one  man 
in  the  room,  except  myself,  with  not  only 
shoes,  but  socks.  And  underneath  his  clothes 
were  all  silk ;  this  was  a  man  indeed.  Yet 
he  was  quite  simple  and  unaffected ;  he  fell 
easily  on  the  knees  of  two  friends,  and  called 
for  some  white  spirit  or  other ;  when  he  got 
it  he  did  not  drink,  but  just  made  little 
pecking  snifis  at  it,  as  a  lady  pecks  at  a 
bouquet. 

His  fall  propelled  a  negro  in  a  red  fez  and 
blue  dressing-gown  into  me,  but  by  this  time 
the  fun  was  much  too  riotous  to  bother  about 
a  little  thing  like  that.  A  black  policeman 
came  in,  and  made  remarks  interpreted  to 
mean  that  this  disorder  must  cease.     He  was 


42  IN    SKA  I  ten    OK    'II  IK    KA.ST. 

greeted  with  roars  of  laugliter,  slapped  coiii- 
paiiioiiably  on  the  back,  and  escorted  into  the 
street  again.  The  twanging  and  the  jangling 
rose  louder  and  louder,  the  lady's  abdomen 
twitched  more  and  more  abnormally,  every 
eye  in  the  audience  was  rolling  with  delight, 
every  voice  bellowing  jokes  or  applause,  the 
very  rich  man  was  pecking  faster  and  faster 
at  his  liqueur.  The  Arab  was  enjoying  his 
Saturday  night.  I  seemed  to  have  stumbled 
on  a  corner  of  the  East  after  all. 

December  21. — Quite  right ;  to-day,  for  the 
first  and  only  day  of  my  journeyings  in  Egypt, 
has  been  spent  in  the  East.  It  is  queer  that 
the  two  ends  of  the  Canal  should  be  so  utterly 
different.  Port  Said  is  the  Levant ;  Suez  is 
the  Orient.  Port  Said  is  young ;  Suez  is 
very  old — one  of  the  very  oldest  surviving 
towns  of  the  world,  a  compeer  of  Damascus 
and  Tangier.  Port  Said  is  prosperous  —  at 
any  rate  in  the  estimation  of  others  —  and 
likely  to  be  more  so ;  Suez  is  quite  done  with, 
and  knows  it.  To  be  sure,  Suez  does  a  little 
import  trade  in  things  like  dates  and  Indian 


SUEZ    AND    THE    CANAL.  43 

fabrics,  but  it  is  very  little.  When  they  made 
the  Canal,  Suez  supposed  that  her  day  was 
coming  again,  and  began  dock-  and  quay- 
building.  Only  the  Canal  passed  her  con- 
temptuously by  and  joined  the  sea  at  Port 
Tewfik,  nearly  a  couple  of  miles  away,  and 
Suez  was  left  high  and  dry  to  look  at  silent 
quays  and  empty  basins.     Poor  Suez ! 

From  the  railway  station  you  see  Port 
Tewfik,  a  cluster  of  green  and  white  and 
brown.  The  railway  embankment  between 
town  and  suburb  is  an  isthmus  at  high  water, 
a  streak  across  a  waste  of  sand  at  low.  I 
went  down  by  train  and  found  a  clean  and 
thriving  little  community  —  flourishing  ave- 
nues, an  esplanade  along  the  Canal  bank, 
white,  gardened  houses  flying  consular  flags. 
It  is  plainly  prosperous,  only  its  prosperity  is 
limited  and  artificial,  like  the  prosperity  of  all 
the  bungalows  you  pass  between  here  and 
Port  Said.  They  all  live  on  the  Canal  dues. 
The  Canal  is  practically  a  French  colony 
forming  the  Eastern  frontier  of  Egypt :  as 
is  the  wont  of  French  colonies,  it  is  very  full 


44  IN    SEARCH    OF    THE    EAST. 

of  officials,  and  could  probably  do  with  one- 
third  of  its  present  staff.     However,  the  dues 
are  high — very  high  :   a  big  P.   and  0.  liner 
will  pay  as  much  as  £1000  for  permission  to 
go  through.     Not  that  the  P.  and  0.  objects : 
"  keeps    the   little    people    out,    y'   know,"   it 
reflects  with  cheerfulness.     But  it  also  keeps 
out,  among  other  things,  Indian  wheat  for  the 
British    consumer.      The   Canal    gets   all   the 
custom  it  wants,   none    the  less  —  seventeen 
out  of  every  twenty  ships  being  British — and 
it  pays.     Its  income  you  may  put  roughly  at 
£4,000,000  yearly ;    its   expenditure   at   half 
that.     Out  of  this  it  pays  a  handsome  divi- 
dend to  the  shareholders.     But  what  becomes 
of  the  rest  of  the  difference  between  receipts 
and  expenditure  no  outsider  knows — though 
some  whisper  Panama.    They  hint  that  things 
somehow  seem  to  cost  more  on  the  books  of 
the    Suez   Company   than    they   can    ever  be 
induced  to  cost  in  real  life  elsewhere  ;   that 
the  little   steam   tramway  carriages  between 
Port  Said  and  Ismailia  run  to  almost  double 
a   fully   appointed   first  -  class   coach    on   the 


THE    CANAL    FINANCES.  45 

P.L.M. ;  that  a  simple  flagstaff  for  signalling 
has  been  known  to  get  through  a  thousand 
pounds.  It  sticks,  say  these  cavillers — some- 
where, somehow  the  money  sticks.  Be  that 
as  it  will,  it  is  at  least  strange  that  the 
Canal's  British  directors  do  British  interests 
so  little  good.  A  dozen  years  or  so  back 
there  were  plans  for  a  competitive  canal ; 
only  instead,  the  existing  company  took  new 
directors,  gave  them  stock,  and  promised 
certain  reforms,  such  as  doubling  the  width 
of  the  channel  and  giving  precedence  to  mail- 
ateamers.  It  promised,  but  nothing  came. 
It  will  not  come  in  the  lifetime  of  old  de 
Lesseps,  said  optimists — and  it  has  not  come 
since  his  death  either. 

Then  go  down  for  the  sunset  to  the  stretch 
of  sandy  loam  they  call  the  cricket-ground. 
It  is  crowded  with  people  walking  up  and 
down — turbaned  Arabs,  or  Greeks  and  Italians 
with  wives  and  children.  All  look  down  the 
gulf,  and  look  you  down  too,  for  such  an 
intoxicating  draught  of  colour  your  Western 
eye  has  never  tasted  yet.     In  front  of  you 


46  IN    SEARCH    OF    THE    EAST. 

shines  the  sapphire  of  the  sea  or  the  turquoise 
of  the  sky ;  to  your  right,  where  the  sun  is 
sinking  behind  them,  the  Egyptian  mountains 
loom  black  -  purple  under  flame  -  orange  and 
liquid  gold  ;  to  your  left  the  mountains  of 
Arabia  catch  up  the  last  rays  and  distil  them 
to  a  flood  of  rosy  crimson.  But  what  is  the 
use  of  naming  colours  ?  There  are  no  names 
for  colours !  Who  shall  say,  for  instance, 
whether  the  African  mountains  are  black  or 
violet,  or  does  the  dying  sun — he  is  turning 
to  scarlet  now  out  of  flame,  and  the  edges 
of  the  scarlet  are  cooling  to  carmine — does 
the  sun  take  all  the  colour  out  of  everything 
else?  You  must  see  colours,  not  read  about 
them,  and  see  them  at  Suez.  So  rich  are 
they,  so  pure,  so  gloriously  intense,  as  if  they 
shone  with  their  own  light,  a  prism  of  suns. 

That  was  colour  ;  that  was  the  East. 

But  never  mind  that.  I  am  going  back  to 
Suez,  and  as  there  is  nobody  looking,  why  not 
take  a  donkey  ?  Suez  is  decrepit  certainly, 
but  it  is  very  oriental  —  the  last  clinging 
foothold    of    the    East,    now    beaten    out   of 


THE  LAST  FOOTHOLD  OF  THE  EAST.    47 

Egypt.  The  mosques  here  are  more  Indian 
than  Saracenic  in  appearance  —  low,  broad, 
white  squares,  with  small  domes  set  in  the 
middle  of  them.  In  the  bazaar  they  mostly 
talk  tlieir  own  languaofes  and  sell  their  own 
products  —  tin -ware  hammered  in  a  sort  of 
cupboard  rather  than  a  shop,  dates,  big 
turnips,  and  fowls  carried  all  day  alive  by 
the  legs.  For  a  town  that  is  hopelessly 
played  out,  Suez  is  contented  enough — per- 
haps all  the  more  so  that  it  is  hopeless,  and 
need  make  no  more  exertion. 


48 


IV. 


IN    SEARCH    OF    EGYPT. 

GRAND  CAIRO  —  SHEPHEARD's  HOTEL  —  THE  BAZAAR  —  THE 
MOSQUE  OF  EL  AZHAR  —  A  PROFESSOR  AND  HIS  PUPILS  — 
THE  MOSQUE  OP  MAHOMET  ALI  —  THE  PEOPLE  —  TOMMY 
ATKINS. 

December  22. — Grand  Cairo  !  And  Grand 
Cairo,  even  after  such  towns  as  Port  Said  and 
Suez,  is  a  bitter  disappointment. 

Port  Said  and  Suez  may  not  be  much ; 
tliey  may  amuse  you  or  they  may  not ;  but, 
at  least,  they  stand  for  something  —  the 
Levant  and  the  East,  and,  whatever  they  are 
not,  they  are  at  least  themselves.  Cairo,  on 
a  superficial  view,  is  not  itself — seems  to  have 
no  self  to  be.  Out  of  your  rather  shabby  first- 
class  carriage,  you  alight  in  the  gathering 
darkness  at  a  rather  shabby  station  of  Conti- 


INSIDE  shepheard's.  49 

nental  type.  There  Is  the  usual  fight  for  your 
body  between  hotels,  the  usual  fight  for  your 
baggage  among  porters.  Then  you  are  out 
in  a  broad  square,  crowded  with  carriages, 
donkeys,  and  people,  and  carpeted  with  two 
inches  of  mud.  The  other  side  of  the  square 
seems  to  be  a  dishevelled  railway  siding ;  its 
centre  a  stopping  -  place  for  electric  trolley- 
cars.  Then,  before  you  know  where  you  are, 
you  have  driven  through  a  couple  of  narrow 
streets  and  you  are  at  Shepheard's  Hotel. 

Inside  Shepheard's  Hotel  you  will  find  just 
the  Bel  Alp  in  winter  quarters.  All  the  people 
who  live  in  their  boxes  and  grand  hotels,  who 
know  all  lands  but  no  languages,  who  have 
been  everywhere  and  done  nothing,  looked  at 
everything  and  seen  nothing,  read  everything 
and  know  nothing — who  spoil  the  globe  by 
trotting  on  it.  And  outside  is  the  native 
complement  of  them  —  guides  and  donkey- 
boys,  hawkers  of  matches  and  piastre  toys, 
rigged  up  In  Bedouin  garb  as  bogus  as  the 
wares  they  purvey  or — on  commission — per- 
suade tourists  to  buy,  every  variation  of  touts 

D 


50 


IN    SEARCH    OF    EGYPT. 


and    beggars    clamorously     waylaying     their 
prey. 

December  23. — Not  but  what  Cairo  has 
features  clearly  defined  enough.  It  has  its 
Levantine  features  in  its  dirty  streets  of  retail 
shops,  with  their  magniloquent  signs  in  Italian 


Street  scene,  Cairo. 

and  Greek — "  Commerce  Grocery,"  "  Oilshop 
Confidence,"  and  the  like.  It  has  its  oriental 
features,  which  had  grown  old  before  ever  a 
winter  tourist  set  foot  in  Cairo.  Also  it  has 
its    Egyptian    features  —  its   pyramids,    that 


AN    OVERRATED    BAZAAR.  51 

looked  down  on  this  place  before  ever  Cairo 
was,  and  when  Egypt  was  neither  Levant  nor 
Orient,  nor  north,  nor  south,  nor  anything 
except  the  heart  of  the  world.  But  these  I 
have  only  seen  as  yet  like  sandhills  in  the 
distance  ;  they  look  from  the  citadel  as  if  they 
were  coming  undone,  but  one  must  not  pre- 
judge them.  However,  I  have  this  day  seen 
a  bazaar,  two  mosques,  a  citadel,  and  the 
Abbassieh  quarter  —  a  beggarly  morning's 
allowance  for  a  sight-seer,  but  very  fair  going 
for  a  mere  journalist. 

About  the  bazaar  there  is  little  enough  to 
tell.  It  has  been  much  over-praised  :  not  for 
size,  completeness  in  itself,  extent  and  genuine- 
ness of  business,  nor  the  mysterious  effect  of 
many  colours  in  the  half-light  of  numberless 
arches,  is  it  fit  to  be  compared  with  the  Great 
Bazaar  of  Constantinople  before  the  earth- 
quake fell  upon  it.  It  is  a  maze  of  narrow 
alleys,  with  open-fronted  shops,  full  of  all 
manner  of  cunning  wonders — carpets,  gold- 
embroidered  silks,  silver  -  embroidered  cash- 
meres,   gold   and    silver   and   chased   bronze, 


52  IN    SEARCH    OF    EGYPT. 

sapphires,  and  emeralds,  and  amber.  Only 
hardly  any  of  them  are  made  In  Egypt,  except 
the  sham  antiquities  :  the  best  of  everything 
comes,  or  says  it  does,  from  Damascus,  Con- 
stantinople, Rhodes,  India — everywhere  but 
Cairo.  And  then  you  miss  the  stately,  green- 
turbaned,  grey-bearded  Turks  squatting  among 
their  merchandise  ;  instead,  you  are  saluted  in 
lisping  English  and  clipped  French.  The  in- 
flux  of  the  West  has  almost  resulted  in  fixed 
prices  ;  you  can  buy  a  thing  in  Cairo  in  some 
ten  minutes,  where  in  Constantinople  you 
would  play  all  the  comedy  of  going  away  in 
disgust,  and  being  called  back  by  a  messenger, 
and  going  away  again,  and  dropping  back  by 
accident,  and  taking  a  friendly  cup  of  coflee, 
and  at  last  making  your  deal  under  protest  on 
both  sides.  Of  course,  you  pay  just  as  much 
too  mucli  in  the  end  ;  but  you  have  had  your 
bit  of  East  thrown  in. 

If  we  want  to  find  the  Egyptian  Egypt  we 
must  walk  on  a  little  to  something  if  not  older, 
at  least  more  unchanging.      Let  us  go  to  the 


AN    ANCIENT    UNIVERSITY.  53 

mosque  of  El-Azhar,  the  most  famous  seminary 
of  all  Islam,  a  university  centuries  older  than 
Oxford  or  Bologna,  a  university  which  counts, 
even  to-day,  twenty  thousand  students.  They 
are  building  a  new  front  to  the  court ;  and 
once  more  there  seems  something  almost  gro- 
tesquely un-oriental  in  the  idea  of  adding  to 
or  restoring  an  ancient  mosque. 

We  must  wait  at  the  door  till  the  sheikh 
brings  us  slippers,  for  the  dust  of  the  street 
must  not  profane  the  holy  place.  While 
waiting,  observe  the  old,  old  man  cruppen 
together  in  a  bunch  on  the  ground,  a  book 
on  his  knees,  swinging  to  and  fro  as  regularly 
as  a  pendulum  till  he  dips  his  forehead  in  the 
dust.  He  is  neither  a  professor  nor  an  under- 
graduate :  he  has  merely  looked  In  for  a  little 
quiet  devotion,  to  which  Moslems  consider  the 
pendulum  action  peculiarly  conducive.  Now 
comes  the  sheikh  with  the  great,  flopping, 
lemon-coloured  slippers,  and  we  go  in.  Other 
devotees  are  strewn  at  random  over  the  sun- 
lit  court ;    some   with    their   noses    literally 


54  IN    SEARCH    OF    EGYPT. 

scraping  the  lines  of  the  Koran — for  Egypt, 
what  with  glare,  and  sand,  and  flies,  and  dis- 
inclination to  wash,  is  the  home  of  blindness. 

Now  let  us  go  into  the  mosque.  A  mean 
mosque,  you  would  say  —  lacking  the  noble 
scope  of  the  Sulimanyeh  at  Constantinople, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  perfect  proportions  of 
St  Sofia.  Meanly  furnished,  too  —  matting 
instead  of  carpet,  with  no  shining  candelabra 
or  gold  -  emblazoned  names  of  God.  This 
mosque  is  small,  oblong,  and  not  very  lofty ; 
the  space  is  cut  up  by  numberless  pillars  and 
low  wooden  rafters,  whence  they  hang  the 
lamps .  during  the  great  Feast  of  Bairam.  It 
is  no  size,  and  you  cannot  see  even  what  size 
it  is. 

But  the  great  feature  of  El  Azhar  is  its 
classes — and  here  they  are.  The  whole  floor 
of  the  mosque  is  littered  with  them.  It  is 
a  profane  similitude,  but  to  me  it  rather 
suggests  Tattersall's  Bing — the  little  dense 
group  round  each  expositor,  and  the  babel 
of  many  voices — except  that  here  everybody 


AN    EDUCATIONAL    LADDER.  55 

is  sitting.  The  whole  ladder  of  education 
lies  before  you.  Here  is  an  elementary  class ; 
little  brown-faced  rascals,  their  elder  brothers' 
tarbushes  down  over  their  ears,  are  having 
cobwebby  Arabic  A  B  C's  painted  on  tin  slates 
by  the  grey-headed  master.  The  classes  run 
to  no  more  than  about  a  dozen  apiece,  which 
is  just  as  well,  for  the  master  seems  quite 
unable  to  control  more  than  one  child  at  a 
time.  The  others  fight  or  laugh  or  try  to 
get  their  feet  out  at  the  open  necks  of  their 
shirts ;  and  you  cannot  but  reflect  on  the 
enormous  advantage  of  the  Eastern  schoolboy, 
in  that  he  can  play  in  moments  of  tedium 
with  his  bare  toes.  Behind  the  next  pillar 
you  see  the  top  of  the  ladder.  A  cross-legged 
circle  of  bearded  young  men,  text  -  book  in 
hand,  are  poring  over  some  religious  point 
which  the  half- blind  professor  monotonously 
expounds.  I  hope  they  are  gaining  profit ; 
but  if  you  contrast  the  dead  stolidity  of  the 
graduates  with  the  twinkling  eyes  in  the 
ABC  class,   it  hardly  seems  a  testimonial 


56  IN    SEARCH    OF    ELiYPT. 

to  the  vivifying  effect  of  the  system.  What 
else  could  you  expect  ?  The  education  of 
El  Azhar  is  dead  and  deadening  ;  education 
in  Islam  is  still  in  hand-and-foot  bondage  to 
theology ;  what  else  could  you  expect  ? 

Now,  come  up  to  the  citadel,  to  the  Mosque 
of  Mahomet  Ali,  the  first  Khedive,  the  Great 
Khedive.  Here  was  an  Egypt  —  it  was  as 
late  as  this  century — not  unworthy  of  Egypt's 
past.  These  were  the  days  when  conquering 
Egypt  came  within  a  march  or  two  of  Con- 
stantinople, and  even  so  was  only  turned  back 
by  the  coalition  of  half  Europe.  The  mosque 
is  the  token  of  such  a  period.  All  is  marble 
and  alabaster.  You  can  wellnigh  see  yourself 
in  its  flagstones  ;  its  bell  -  shaped  fountain, 
with  cupola,  all  richly  carved,  speaks  for  an 
empire  in  itself;  its  inside  is  majestically  vast 
and  majestically  empty  —  nothing  but  rich 
carpets  underfoot,  and  then,  through  the 
shining  candelabra,  the  names  of  God  in  gold 
in  Arabic  and  the  mosaics  of  the  dome  above. 
There  is  that  in  the  solemn   emptiness  of  a 


A   GREAT    AND    PROUD    CITY,  57 

great  mosque  which  seems  to  stimulate  a 
large  devotion  far  better  than  the  niggUng 
trappings  of  a  cathedral. 

And  now,  come  out  of  this  regal  tomb  into 
Cairo.  Look  at  it  first  as  you  pass  down — 
what  a  great  and  flourishing  city !  Look  at 
the  huge  mosques  with  their  fretted  minarets, 
the  dense  brown  and  swarming  dots  of  popu- 
lation in  the  native  quarters,  the  lanes  of 
green  and  luxurious  villas  of  the  European 
and  Levantine  suburbs  of  Ismailieh  and 
Abbassieh.  Look  across  the  ribbon  of  the 
Nile  where  the  great  bridge  strides  over 
it  by  Kasr-el-Nil  barracks,  and  then  left- 
ward to  the  hoary  Pyramids  of  Ghizeh  and 
Sakarreh,  and  rightwards  to  the  royal  palaces, 
white  jewels  among  their  trees.  You  would 
say  that  such  properties  alone,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  men  and  the  edifices  to-day,  must  surely 
make  a  great  and  proud  city. 

But  now  come  down  and  look  at  the  people 
of  Cairo.  There  are  the  grandees  of  modern 
Egypt  rolling  by   in    their  London  or  Paris 


58  IN    SEARCH    OF    EGYPT. 

built  carriages  —  a  flash  of  scarlet  and  gold 
waistcoats,  white  drawers,  and  bare,  brown 
legs,  as  their  running  grooms  shout  to  clear 
the  way  before  them,  and  then  a  stout  frock- 
coat  and  tarbush  in  the  landau.  These 
grandees  are  proud  to  call  themselves  Turks, 
or  even  Armenian.  Here  are  the  common 
people,  squatting  in  little  open  shops,  or 
driving  donkeys,  or  doing  delightful  nothing 
in  the  sun.  They  are  Arab  crossed  on  Copt 
with  a  dash  of  Negro ;  who  knows  what  they 
are  ?  They  call  themselves  Arabs,  not  Egyp- 
tians— and  the  clean-blooded  Arabs  disown 
them.  And  here  is  the  Italian  wine-shop  and 
the  Greek  grocery  ;  the  interpreter  with  those 
American  tourists  is  a  Syrian,  and  he  is  ex- 
pounding to  them  an  official  document  issued 
in  French. 

No,  no ;  there  are  no  Egyptians,  and  there 
is  no  such  nation  as  Egypt.  And  then  the 
blare  of  a  band  swells  up  the  street — 

"When  I  were  bo-und  appre-enticc  in  famous  Lincolnshire" 
—and  khaki,  white  helmet,  Lee-Metford  and 


ATKINS    IN    EGYPT. 


59 


bayonet,  buckles  and  pipe -clay,  swings  past 
Tommy  Atkins.  That  is  the  first  and  last 
thing  you  will  see  in  Cairo  that  is  all  in  one 
piece  and  knows  its  own  mind.  That,  for  the 
time  being,  is  Egypt. 


*'V|^jiff 


Street  scene,   Cairo. 


60 


V. 


ON   THE   EGYPTIAN    CONSTITUTION. 

OUTWARD  EVIDENCES  OF  ENGLISH  RULE  —  A  HEART-BREAK- 
ING  HANDICAP  —  A  TOPSY-TURVY  CONSTITUTION  —  KHEDIVH, 
CONSUL-GENERAL,  AND  SIRDAR  —  FOREIGN  CAPITULATIONS 
— CAISSE  DE  LA  DETTE — THE  REAL  GOVERNOR  OF  EGYPT, 
THOMAS  COOK.  AND  SON — THE  PROGRESS   OF  FIFTEEN   YEARS. 

December  24-  —  Egypt  is  very  much  like 
Turkey  to  the  outward  eye ;  yet  almost 
from  the  moment  of  landing  you  begin  to 
notice  differences.  The  general  effect  of 
them  is  that  Egypt  seems  to  be  being 
governed ;  Turkey  does  not.  At  Port  Said 
you  observe  the  coastguard  and  the  police ; 
their  uniforms  are  not  merely  whole,  but 
smart,  clean,  workmanlike.  You  go  a  little 
farther  and  you  see  a  man  carefully  sweeping 
the  street.  A  little  farther  a  couple  of  men 
are  mending  the   tramway — squattinf^  down 


FRENCH   AND   ENGLISH   LOCOMOTIVES.       61 

to  do  it  in  true  oriental  style,  but  the  fact 
that  they  are  mending  anything  at  all  is 
staggeringly  un-oriental.  As  you  travel  about 
you  notice  that  the  railway  carriages — that 
is  to  say,  the  newer  ones — are  comfortable, 
clean,  and  stoutly  built ;  they  bear  the  legend 
in  English,  "  Boulac  shops,"  with  the  date 
of  construction.  Each  train  has  a  post-van, 
an  animal  -  van,  and  a  couple  of  vans  for 
fish  and  vegetables.  The  newer  engines  are 
well-set-up  English -looking  creatures:  they 
have  quality,  as  a  cavalry  subaltern  well  put 
it,  unlike  those  underbred  brutes,  French 
locomotives. 

When  you  get  to  a  hotel,  you  are  indeed 
asked  for  your  name  and  dwelling-place ;  but 
not  whence  you  came,  whither  you  go,  your 
vocation,  religion,  and  all  the  rest  of  your 
biography,  in  which  Continental  Govern- 
ments are  so  interested.  The  country  is  well 
managed,  it  seems,  yet  without  fussiness. 
Even  at  Port  Said  and  Suez,  let  alone  Cairo, 
you  find  a  well- worked  system  of  telephones  ; 
such  a  thing  could  never  be  allowed  in  Turkey, 


62  ON    THE    EGYPTIAN    CONSTITUTION. 

for  it  cannot  be  censored,  like  the  telegraph, 
and  people  might  hatch  treason  over  it.  In 
Cairo,  again,  you  find  a  well- worked  system 
of  electric  tramways — and  is  it  not  a  proud 
reflection  for  the  Londoner  that  both  in 
telephones  and  tramways  Moslem  Egypt, 
Arab  Cairo,  is  ahead  of  his  own  Imperial 
city  ? 

Of  course,  you  know  why  it  is.  "  England 
has  got  Egypt  now,"  you  cheerfully  say, 
and  think  no  more  about  it.  But  not 
quite  so  fast.  England,  as  you  say,  has 
occupied  Egypt  ever  since  1882;  but  if  you 
think  occupation  means  doing  as  you  like, 
then  you  go  the  way  to  do  great  injustice 
to  the  men  who  are  doing  England's  work 
in  this  country.  Tliey  do  keep  things  fairly 
straight,  but  the  British  newspaper -reader 
can  form  not  the  faintest  idea  of  the  heart- 
breaking handicap  they  run  under.  Egypt 
has  the  most  topsy-turvy  constitution  in  the 
whole  world ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  under- 
stand in  the  face  of  what  prodigious  difficulties 
we  have  done  our  work  in  it,  until  you  have 


A    MERE   ACCIDENT.  63 

some  vague  notion  exactly  how  topsy-turvy- 
it  is.  So,  if  it  is  not  too  much  of  a  bore,  I 
will  try  to  tell  you. 

In  theory,  Egypt  belongs  to  Great  Britain 
no  more  than  Shepheard's  Hotel  belongs  to 
me.  There  happen  to  be  British  garrisons  in 
Cairo  and  Alexandria,  but  that  is  quite  an 
accident.  They  are  there  to  maintain  the 
authority  of  the  Khedive  and  to  restore 
order.  They  have  been  engaged  in  these 
modest  duties  for  nearly  sixteen  years  now ; 
Egypt  is  as  orderly  a  country  as  exists  on 
earth,  and  the  Khedive,  for  one,  would  be 
only  too  glad  to  try  maintaining  his  authority 
without  them — only,  somehow,  they  still  stay. 
In  practice,  as  everybody  knows,  they  are 
there  to  uphold  the  paramount  authority  of 
England  in  Egypt :  in  theory  they  came  there 
at  the  time  of  Arabi's  rebellion,  and  have  not 
yet  gone  away. 

Besides  the  army  of  occupation  there  are 
two  classes  of  Englishmen  doing  England's 
work  in  Egypt.  One  is  the  staff  of  the 
British  Agency.      Its   head.  Lord  Cromer,  is, 


64  ON   THE    EGYrTIAN    CONSTITUTION. 

as  you  know,  the  mouthpiece  of  our  policy 
and,  in  practice,  the  ultimate  ruler  of  Egypt. 
They  say  in  Cairo  that  when  Lord  Cromer 
is  feeling  well,  and  well  disposed  to  all  the 
world,  he  goes  to  the  Khedive  ;  when  he  is 
not  he  has  the  Khedive  to  see  him,  and  that 
in  either  case  the  Khedive  does  what  he  is 
told  ;  though  we  must  not  pay  too  much 
attention  to  what  they  say  in  Cairo.  Only 
in  theory  Lord  Cromer  is  not  even  an 
Ambassador,  but  just  a  Consul  -  General — 
which  means  a  gentleman  who  concerns  him- 
self with  ships'  papers  and  small  disputes 
between  British  subjects  —  and  also  British 
Agent,  which  might  mean  anything  or 
nothing  at  all.  In  theory,  he  has  no  more 
right  to  tell  the  Khedive  what  is,  or  is  not, 
to  be  done  than  you  have.  He  just  happens 
to  give  advice,  and  the  Khedive  happens  to 
take  it. 

The  other  class  of  Englishmen  is  in  the 
Egyptian  service.  There  is  a  financial  ad- 
viser to  H.H.  the  Khedive,  a  judicial  adviser, 
English  under-secretaries  in  the  departments 


THE  MONTECITO  HOME  OLUB 
LIBRARY 

A   COMPLEX    GOVERNMENT.  65 

of  Public  Works,  the  Interior,  the  Treasury,  a 
high  official  at  the  Education  Office,  and  a 
very  resolute-minded  Sirdar  at  the  War  Office. 
In  practice,  these  gentlemen  are  the  adminis- 
trators of  Egypt.  In  theory,  they  are  sub- 
ordinates of  the  Cabinet  Ministers,  and  the 
Cabinet  Ministers  are  subordinates  of  the 
Khedive.  The  English  under  -  secretaries 
happen  to  suggest  reforms,  and  their  chiefs 
and  the  Khedive  happen  to  approve  of  them. 
You  will  readily  perceive  that  this  arrange- 
ment will  work  well  enough  as  long  as  every- 
body wants  it  to  work  well ;  it  is  only  when 
they  do  not  —  which  is  usually  —  that  the 
position  becomes  a  little  complicated.  But 
as  yet  we  are  only  at  the  beginning  of 
complications.  If  this  were  all,  we  should 
only  have  Egypt  to  deal  with.  But  Egypt 
is  only  half  or  a  quarter  of  an  independent 
country.  There  are  in  Egypt,  as  in  Turkey, 
what  are  called  Capitulations  with  foreign 
Powers,  and  the  general  effect  of  these  is  that 
Egypt  has  hardly  any  jurisdiction  whatever 
over  the  subjects   of  any   Power  with  which 

E 


66  ON    TrTF<:    KCiYlTlAX    CON.STTTITTION. 

she  has  Capitulations.  These  include  all  the 
Great  Powers  and  most  of  the  small  ones. 
Practically,  Egypt  has  no  authority  whatever 
over  the  foreigners  within  her  gates.  She 
cannot  tax  them  without  the  consent  of  their 
Governments,  though  they  may  make  a  for- 
tune out  of  the  country  ;  she  cannot  punish 
them,  though  they  may  commit  every  crime 
in  her  calendar.  If  I  were  to  go  out  of  the 
hotel  now  and  shoot  an  Egyptian,  and  then 
go  into  a  Frenchman's  house,  the  Egyptian 
police  could  not  enter  the  house  without  the 
presence  of  the  French  Consul,  and  could  not 
arrest  me  without  the  presence  of  the  English 
Consul ;  and  by  him  I  should  be  tried.  As 
Egypt  is  chock-full  of  foreigners,  many  of 
them  the  wealthiest  men  in  the  country,  and 
many  also  the  most  rascally,  these  Capitula- 
tions add  a  new  perplexity  to  the  task  of 
government.  Since  the  occupation  things 
have  improved  slightly,  in  that  foreigners 
have  now  to  pay  one  out  of  the  three  prin- 
cipal taxes ;  and  of  course  they  are  always 
to  be  got  at  by  the  8  per  cent  customs  duty. 


CAISSE    DE    LA    DETTE.  67 

The  Greek  courts,  too,  which  formerly  used  to 
aid  and  abet  their  countrymen  in  all  manner 
of  crime,  have  lately  become  much  more  judi- 
cial. But  with  all  that  has  been  done,  the 
Capitulations  remain  an  ever-galling  shackle 
on  Egypt,  and  the  Powers  —  which  means 
France — show  no  disposition  to  knock  them 
off. 

And  that  is  not  nearly  all.  Not  only  may 
not  Egypt  punish  those  who  commit  crimes 
against  its  own  people,  but  it  may  not  even 
spend  its  own  money.  Before  the  British 
occupation  Egypt  was  so  ill-advised  as  to 
become  virtually  bankrupt.  So  in  the  inter- 
ests of  her  creditors,  the  bondholders,  Europe 
set  up  the  Caisse  de  la  Dette.  On  this  body 
sits  a  representative  of  each  of  the  six  Great 
Powers.  The  revenue  of  Egypt  is  divided 
into  two  nearly  equal  parts  :  one-half  goes 
to  the  Caisse  to  pay  the  interest  on  the  debt, 
the  other  half  to  pay  for  the  government  of 
Egypt.  If  the  bondholders  fall  short,  the 
Government  has  to  make  it  up.  But  the 
Government  may  be  as  short  as  it  likes ;  the 


68  ON    THE    EGYPTIAN    CONSTITUTION. 

bondholders  will  not  help  it  out  of  their  half 
of  the  revenue,  unless  the  Caisse  unanimously 
agrees.  As  France  and  Russia  are  represented 
on  the  Caisse,  it  need  hardly  be  said  it  is 
exceedingly  likely  not  to  agree.  The  com- 
plexities of  this  double  budget  are  endless ; 
but  perhaps  we  have  had  enough  complexity 
for  one  morning.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
the  interest  on  the  debt  is  easily  paid  every 
year,  and  that  Egypt  must  go  short  of  neces- 
sary reforms  for  want  of  cash;  while  the  Caisse 
out  of  its  surpluses  has  piled  up  a  useless 
reserve  fund  of  six  millions  out  of  Egypt's 
own  money,  which  Egypt  may  not  touch. 

The  nominal  suzerain  of  Egypt  is  the  Sul- 
tan ;  its  real  suzerain  is  Lord  Cromer.  Its 
nominal  Governor  is  the  Khedive ;  its  real 
Governor,  for  a  final  touch  of  comic  opera, 
is  Thomas  Cook  &  Son.  Cook's  representa- 
tive is  the  first  person  you  meet  in  Egypt, 
and  you  go  on  meeting  him.  He  sees  you  in ; 
he  sees  you  through  ;  he  sees  you  out.  You 
see  the  back  of  a  native — turban,  long  blue 
gown,   red   girdle,   barf^    brown   legs ;     "  How 


THE   native's    giddiest   AMBITION.  69 

truly  oriental ! "  you  say.  Then  he  turns 
round,  and  you  see  "Cook's  Porter"  emblaz- 
oned across  his  breast.  "  You  travel  Cook, 
sir,"  he  grins ;  "  allright."  And  it  is  all 
right :  Cook  carries  you,  like  a  nursing  father, 
from  one  end  of  Egypt  to  the  other.  Cook 
has  personally  conducted  more  than  one  ex- 
pedition into  the  Soudan,  and  done  it  as  no 
Transport  Department  could  do.  The  popula- 
tion of  the  Nile  banks  raises  produce  for  Cook, 
and  for  him  alone.  In  other  countries  the 
lower  middle-classes  aspire  to  a  place  under 
Government ;  in  Egypt  they  aspire  to  a  place 
under  Cook.  "  Good  Cook  shob  all  the  time," 
is  the  native's  giddiest  ambition  —  a  perma- 
nent engagement  with  Cook. 

Cook  gives  no  trouble ;  but  the  other  prin- 
cipalities and  powers  are  not  so  easy  to  deal 
with.  If  France  is  sulky,  she  refuses  to  let 
Egypt  have  money  out  of  the  Caisse  reserve 
fund  for  Egypt's  most  urgent  needs.  If 
Greece  is  petulant,  she  refuses  to  convict  her 
subjects  of  crimes,  and  lets  them  go  assaulting 
and  burgling  at  large  through  Egypt.     If  the 


70  ON    THE    EGYPTIAN    CONSTITUTION. 

Khedive  loses  his  temper — and  he  can  be  very 
naughty  when  he  hkes  —  he  can  incite  the 
Englishman's  official  superiors  to  overrule  his 
suggestions,  or  his  subordinates  to  disobey  his 
orders.  And  in  all  these  cases,  in  theory,  the 
Englishman  is  helpless. 

And  yet  it  works.  Fifteen  years  ago  Egy|)t 
was  bankrupt,  rebellious,  miserable,  oppressed, 
defeated.  To-day  she  is  solvent,  orderly,  pros- 
perous, well -governed,  victorious.  For  the 
next  day  or  two  I  am  going  round  in  a 
carriage  from  office  to  office  asking  how  on 
earth  it  was  done.  But  one  thing,  meanwhile, 
is  quite  certain :  England  did  it.  Did  it 
without  especially  intending  it  or  altogether 
knowing  it :  did  it,  that  is,  by  sheer  uncon- 
scious English  genius  for  rule. 


71 


VL 

HOW   IT   STRIKES   A   PASHA. 

CHRISTMAS  DAY  IN  CAIRO — THE  ANTI-ENGLISH  POINT  OP  VIEW 
— THE  CASE  OF  THE  PROCUREUR-G^N^RAL — SIR  JOHN  SCOTT 
— ORIENTALS   AND   WESTERN   RULE — A   HOSTILE   PASHA. 

December  25. — I  woke  this  morning  in  the 
usual  cage  of  mosquito-gauze,  rang  the  bell, 
and  the  usual  brown  face  under  a  tarbush 
poked  itself  in  at  the  door,  "  Cold  bath." 
"  Allrlght."  The  Egyptian  mind  sees  nothing 
familiar  in  "  allright,"  believing  it  to  be  the 
English  for  "  yes."  The  customary  dialogue 
was  now  over,  but  the  brown  face  remained 
inside  the  door.  Suddenly  it  widened  into  a 
gleaming  grin:  "Good  Christmas,  sar,"  it 
said.  By  Jove  !  yes  ;  it  was  Christmas  Day  ; 
and  looking  out  of  window  I  saw,  for  the 
first   time    in    Egypt,   a   true   English   sky  — 


72  now    IT    STRIKES    A    TASIIA. 

heavy  and  yellow.  It  was  chilly  cold  too 
but  that  it  always  is  at  night ;  Egypt  is  not 
near  so  warm  as  it  looks.  Lookintr  down 
from  the  window,  I  started.  Was  I  still 
asleep,  or  did  I  really  see  that  great  white 
bird,  stork  -  billed,  duck  -  footed,  waddling 
placidly  up  to  the  back-door  of  Shepheard's  ? 
And  then  I  remembered  that  a  tame  crane 
of  great  dignity  was  wont  to  disport  himself 
there ;  but  that  took  all  the  Christmas  out 
of  my  mouth. 

When  I  got  up  I  found  the  hotel  full  of 
bouquets  of  roses ;  a  few  people  went  out 
later,  ostensibly  to  church ;  but  otherwise 
the  wandering  English  made  Christmas  Day 
much  like  any  other  day.  No  such  luck  for 
the  British  residents.  It  seems  that  when 
they  first  came  here,  the  society  of  Cairo 
was  much  concerned  to  find  that  they  had 
no  day  for  all  going  round  calling  on  each 
other,  as  Continentals  do  on  New  Year's 
Day,  Levantine  Christians  on  their  New 
Year's  Day,  twelve  days  later,  and  Mussul- 
mans   at    Bairam.       On     consideration,     the 


CHRISTMAS    IN    CAIRO.  73 

society  of  Cairo  decided  that  the  British 
ought  to  have  such  an  anniversary,  and 
fixed  on  Christmas  Day  as  the  most  suit- 
able. The  British  had  to  bear  it,  and  with 
time  it  has  grown  to  an  institution.  So  the 
ladies  sit  at  home  all  the  afternoon  dealing 
out  tea,  and  the  gentlemen  go  round,  calling 
on  everybody  else,  and  Egyptian  friends  call 
on  everybody  after  the  same  manner ;  so 
that  the  whole  British  colony,  with  native 
auxiliaries,  rotates  in  a  body  round  itself  all 
Christmas  afternoon. 

A  stranger,  I  was  called  on  for  no  such 
effort ;  so  I  went  out  peacefully  to  lunch  with 
a  pasha.  There  is  something  very  piquantly 
un-Christmas-like  in  such  a  recreation.  My 
pasha,  to  look  at,  was  quite  European,  all 
but  his  tarbush.  His  face  was  really  large, 
but  looked  small  because  of  the  keen  alert- 
ness of  every  feature ;  he  was  really  of  the 
middle -age,  but  his  sharp  nose,  twinkling 
eyes,  and  hair,  showing  close-cropped  when 
he  pushed  back  the  tarbush,  gave  him  almost 
the    aspect   of  a   boy       At    table   were    his 


74  HOW    IT    STRIKES    A    PASHA. 

daughter  and  her  EngUsh  governess  —  the 
EngHshwoman  precise  like  a  governess,  but 
open-minded  hke  a  woman  who  has  seen 
the  world ;  the  daughter,  with  great  black 
eyes  in  a  pale  face,  double  pigtail,  dressed 
much  like  an  English  schoolgirl,  demure 
beyond  her  years.  After  lunch — just  elab- 
orate enough  to  be  excellent,  but  not  so 
elaborate  as  to  be  ostentatious  —  we  talked 
politics.  And  I  very  quickly  perceived  that 
my  pasha,  a  personal  friend  of  many  British, 
was  no  friend  of  Britain  in  Egypt. 

"  I  am  in  opposition  ?  No  ;  I  am  no  longer 
minister,  but  here,  unhappily,  there  is  no 
opposition." 

I  said  I  had  gathered  that,  one  way  and 
another,  there  was  a  good  deal. 

"Yes;  but  what  is  it?"  he  cried.  "Here 
there  is  no  party  government,  no  constitu- 
tional government,  no  public  opinion.  Here 
we  must  sit  and  obey  our  masters." 

"  Then  would  you  like  to  see  us  go  to- 
morrow ? "  I  said. 

And  at  that  he  went  off:    he   pushed   his 


CANDID    CRITICISM.  76 

fez  furiously  backwards  and  forwards  over 
his  bullet  head,  and  broke  forth  uncontrol- 
lably, "  Would  I  like  all  my  servants  to 
leave  my  house  to-morrow  ?  What  should 
I  do?  If  all  you  English  went  to-morrow, 
what  could  Egypt  do  ?  It  would  be  ruin. 
The  English  are  everywhere ;  every  good 
post  must  go  to  an  Englishman ;  how  is  it 
possible  that  the  country  should  govern  it- 
self when  only  Englishmen  are  allowed  to 
govern  it?  You  say  you  are  here  for  our 
good ;  you  are  teaching  Egypt  to  govern 
herself  Teach  her  by  all  means,  we  say. 
But  what  do  we  see?  At  first  it  was  only 
a  few  English  in  the  highest  positions ;  good. 
But  now  the  second-rate  and  third-rate  posi- 
tions are  filled  by  English  too ;  each  year 
there  are  more.  It  seems  that  the  longer 
you  stay  here,  the  less  able  are  the  Egyp- 
tians to  govern  themselves.  You  are  not 
teaching  us,  and  you  are  preventing  us  from 
teaching  ourselves.  The  other  day  the  Pro- 
cureur-G^n^ral  was  turned  out  of  his  oJBfice ; 
he  is  a  poor  man,  with  many  children ;   an 


76  HOW    IT    STRIKES    A    PASHA. 

Englishman  now  takes  his  place.  And  it  is 
not  an  EnMish  office  —  Procureur- General ; 
the  Enoflish  are  not  used  to  the  duties.  Yet 
an  Englishman  !  Fifteen  years'  occupation — 
and  there  is  no  Egyptian  fit  to  be  Procureur- 
General.     Pouf ! " 

The  case  of  the  Procureur-General  moved 
his  indignation  especially.  I  do  not  pretend 
to  know  the  merits  of  it ,  but  this  is  what  I 
had  gathered.  A  few  weeks  ago  an  Arab 
journalist,  you  may  remember,  was  imprisoned 
for  libelling  the  Khedive.  The  ingenious 
author  printed  an  Arabic  ode  in  slanting 
double  columns  :  if  you  read  it  at  one  angle 
it  was  a  glowing  panegyric ,  if  at  another  it 
came  out  slightly  otherwise. 

"  All  hail,  great  Prince  ! 

Whom  I  can  only  call  a  calamity  to  this  country." 

That  was  the  general  trend  of  it,  and  it 
must  be  owned  that,  if  libelling  monarchs  is 
crime,  this  was  a  clear  case.  But  it  is  said 
the  Khedive  seized  the  occasion,  with  the 
help   of  the    Procureur  -  General,    to   go   for 


EASTERN    IDEAS    OF    DISCIPLINE.  77 

everybody  he  disliked,  though  there  was  no 
jot  of  evidence  to  connect  them  with  the 
Hbel.  The  Procureur-General,  so  went  the 
story,  was  told  he  mustn't  do  things  like 
that ;  whereto  he  replied  that  he  was  acting 
under  higher  orders.     Whereon  he  had  to  go. 

But  my  pasha  would  hear  of  no  apology  for 
such  an  act.  "  The  people  see  a  high  official 
removed  like  that,  with  no  trial,  nobody 
knows  why ;  they  say  he  is  a  victim — it  is 
because  he  opposed  the  English.  It  is  very 
easy  to  talk  of  unwholesome  palace  influ- 
ences—it is  fashionable  nowadays  —  but  I 
do  not  believe  it.  He  w^as  removed  because 
he  did  not  do  what  Sir  John  Scott  told 
him.  This  is  not  teaching  people  to  govern 
themselves ;   it  is  introducing  funk." 

"  I  suppose  Sir  John  Scott  was  his  official 
superior,"  I  said  ;  "  I  should  call  it  introduc- 
ing discipline." 

"  But  such  a  high  official  I  With  smaller 
ones,  certainly;  otherwise,  no  government 
would  be  possible,  but  a  Procureur-General  I " 

"  All  the  more,  we  should  say  in  England." 


78  HOW    IT    STRIKES    A    PASHA. 

"  But  he  is  dishonoured ;  things  are  said 
against  him,  and  he  has  had  no  trial." 

"But  if  he  is  considered  a  victim,  then  how 
is  he  dishonoured  ?  And  if  he  is  innocent, 
why  doesn't  he  defend  himself  publicly  ? " 

"  Ah,  he  is  a  poor  man ;  he  has  many 
children  ;  he  might  lose  his  pension." 

"  Pity  he  didn't  think  of  that  before  he 
disobeyed  orders." 

"  But  a  Procureur-Gdneral !  You  would 
surely  not  expect  the  same  implicit  obedience 
from  such  a  high  official !  A  Procureur- 
General ! " 

And  so  on.  The  case  of  the  late  Procureur- 
G^n^ral  is  doubtless  more  interesting  to  him- 
self than  it  is  to  me.  But  I  quote  this  bit  of 
conversation  to  show  the  unbridged  gulf  that 
yawns  between  the  Eastern  and  the  Western 
mind.  Here  was  a  gentleman  of  perfect 
manners,  high  education,  and  great  experi- 
ence of  business  of  state,  travelled,  speaking 
many  languages  perfectly,  and  excellently 
acquainted  with  the  affairs  of  all  Europe. 
But   to   him   it   appeared   monstrous   that  a 


THE    DRIFT    OF    POPULAR   FEELING.  79 

hio-h  official  should  be  cashiered  for  insubord- 

o 

ination  as  if  he  were  a  low  one ;  and  the  size 
of  the  man's  family  and  its  proportion  to  the 
pension  seemed  to  him  vital  merits  of  the 
case.  Is  it  a  wonder  that  Orientals  do  not 
understand  Western  rule  ? 

Still,  from  the  pasha's  point  of  view,  the 
argument  that  Englishmen  are  taking  more, 
instead  of  less,  part  in  the  Government  from 
year  to  year,  thus  preventing  natives  from 
trying  their  hand  at  ruling,  must  be  admitted 
to  carry  its  weight.  "  Presently,"  he  said, 
"you  will  have  a  popular  uprising  against 
you.  Formerly  it  was  only  the  upper  classes 
who  were  discontented ;  now,  as  Englishmen 
take  second-  and  third-class  posts,  it  will  be 
the  bourgeoisie  and  the  peasants."  He  also 
asserted — wrongly,  if  I  remember  the  figures — 
that  the  land-tax  has  not  been  reduced,  while 
prices  have  fallen  heavily.  Also,  that  our 
presence  makes  France  jealous,  and  disposes 
her  to  lock  up  Egypt's  money  in  the  Caisse 
reserve ;  which,  from  Egypt's  side,  is  un- 
doubtedly a  point.     Also,  that  the  difficulties 


80  HOW    IT   STRIKES    A    PASHA. 

of  Egypt,  which  cuhninated  in  Arabi,  were 
really  due  to  European  interference ;  also, 
that  the  British  had  not  done  very  much  for 
the  country,  most  reforms  really  dating  from 
the  Dual  Control.  These  two  arguments 
tend  to  kill  each  other,  but  no  doubt  there  is 
a  foundation  for  each  of  them.  Pending  in- 
quiries into  all  this,  I  left  my  hospitable,  ex- 
citable, England  -  hating  pasha  ordering  his 
carriage  to  make  Christmas  calls  on  his 
English  friends. 


81 


VIL 

AN   ARABIC   EDITOR   AND   BRITISH   TRADE. 

THE  KEEPING  OF  DIARIES  —  THE  NECESSITY  FOR  A  SENSE  OP 
HUMOUR— THE  WORLD'S  HALF-WAY  HOUSE — A  COSMOPOLITAN 
BAR — THE  INTERIOR  OP  AN  ARAB  NEWSPAPER-OFFICE— AN 
editor's  VIEWS — A  SCIENTIFIC  JOURNAL — THE  WANT  OP 
BRITISH   CAPITAL  AND   TRADE. 

December  29. — I  notice  that  all  the  dwellers 
in  Shepheard's  Hotel  keep  diaries  except  me, 
who  am  paid  for  doing  so.  You  can  see  them 
in  the  writing-room,  jotting  notes  on  large 
sheets  of  foolscap,  or  entering  the  finished 
product  neatly  into  neat  leather-bound  vol- 
umes. At  table  dliote  you  will  hear  them 
quoting  from  the  same  works  —  sometimes 
even  producing  the  book  itself  to  guarantee 
their  reminiscences.  For  my  part  I  have  long 
repented  my  rash  undertaking  to  keep  a  diary. 
Here  are  four  days  since  Christmas  and  not  a 


82        AN    ARABIC    EDITOR   AND    BRITISH   TRADE. 

line  of  entry  to  show  for  them.  I  wonder 
what  I  have  been  doino^ ! 

Not  much,  I  am  afraid,  fit  to  put  into  a  diary. 
But  I  have  knocked  about,  and  I  have  dis- 
covered a  certain  number  of  things.  I  have 
started  a  circular  tour  round  the  Under-Sec- 
retaries and  Advisers  of  Egypt  with  a  view  to 
discovering  how  on  earth  they  keep  Egypt 
going;  but  it  progresses  slowly,  because  the 
only  public  office  the  Cairo  cabman  knows  is 
the  War  Office,  and  he  always  takes  you  there 
first,  to  inquire  your  way  to  somewhere  at  the 
other  corner  of  the  city.  In  my  Cairo  of 
course — the  sun -seeker  Cairo — they  do  not 
know  what  Government  offices  are. 

I  have  also  taken  all  the  expert  opinion 
I  can  on  the  general  political  situation,  begin- 
ning with  the  donkey-boy  outside  the  hotel 
and  winding  up  with  Lord  Cromer.  Lord 
Cromer  has  been  playing  Christmas  games  at 
the  British  Agency,  and  the  Levantine-French 
editor  of  the  little  piastre  rag  which  impotent- 
ly  reviles  him  has  been  sitting  up  till  one  in 
the  morning  at  the  cafe  talking  high  politics  : 


A   PIQUANT    COUNTRY.  83 

which  Is  Egypt  all  over.  Working  men  sit 
playing  backgammon  in  the  streets  at  midday, 
and  schoolboys  get  up  at  one  in  the  morning 
and  read  lesson-books  till  five  ;  that  is  just 
Egypt.  For  a  man  with  a  sense  of  humour 
transcending  work,  worry,  anomaly,  obstruc- 
tion, and  summer-heat,  Egypt  must  be  a  par- 
adise ;  of  a  man  without  this  it  must  soon 
break  the  heart.     You  must  laugh  or  die. 

Add  that  it  is  the  half-way  house  of  the 
whole  world  :  that  you  meet  this  man  on  his 
way  from  Borneo  to  Kio  de  Janeiro,  and  that 
going  out  from  Boston  (Mass.),  to  shoot  a 
black  panther  in  Sumatra  ;  that  English  Mas- 
ters of  Arts  keep  American  bars,  and  United 
Presbyterians  work  hard  at  their  offices  on 
Sunday — and  j^ou  will  own  that  Egypt  is  a 
piquant  country  enough.  The  men  that  have 
been  broke,  the  men  that  have  been  disbarred, 
the  men  that  have  cheated  at  cards,  the  men 
that  have  done  nothing  in  particular  except 
not  get  on  with  civilisation  —  you  will  find 
them  between  ten  and  early  morning  clutch- 
ing   brass    rails    before    the    bars    of    Cairo. 


84        AN    ARABIC    EDITOR    AND    BRITISH    TRADE. 

Where  two  or  three  are  met  too:ether  it  is 
odds  on  that  one  of  them  has  changed  his 
name. 

And  what  do  you  say  to  this  for  social  pic- 
turesqueness  ?  I  went  into  the  St  James's  bar 
yesterday  afternoon :  at  the  door  a  wind- 
burned  Arab  face  looked  out  of  a  white  hood 
and  offered  to  guide  me  to  some  snipe-shooting. 
Inside  the  bar  was  a  fat-faced  young  native  in 
a  shepherd's  plaid  lounge-suit,  talking  the 
English  of  Piccadilly  to  the  barmaid.  The 
man  outside  was  no  more  a  Bedawin  than  I 
am ;  he  was  one  of  the  imitations  who  hang 
about  the  Pyramids  with  fierce  looks,  and 
blackmail  timid  tourists  for  backsheesh.  But 
the  man  inside  really  was  a  Bedawin — a  Be- 
dawin chief;  not  one  of  whose  people  except 
himself  had  ever  seen  a  town.  And  he  had 
been  educated  at  TTaileybury !  And  beside 
him  sat  a  prince  of  the  Khedivial  house 
standing  Scotch  whisky  to  a  British  sergeant  I 
The  miin  was  half  awed,  half  patronising  ;  the 
prince  was  half  condescending,  half  propitia- 
tory, and  he  was  saying  how  much  lie  admired 


THE    EDITORIAL    SANCTUM.  85 

the  English.     Can  there  be  any  place  in  the 
world  like  Cairo? 

But  we  must  remember  our  politics,  and 
here  even  politics  have  their  piquancy. 

For  example,  I  went  the  other  day  to  see 
the  editor  of  an  Arab  newspaper.  His  office 
is  a  disused  palace :  all  new  Khedives  and 
their  relations  build  new  palaces  in  this  coun- 
try, so  that  it  is  difficult  to  find  a  house  of  any 
size  that  has  not  begun  life  as  a  palace.  In 
the  middle  wing  sits  the  editor  writing  his 
leader — a  string  of  Arabic  cobwebs  down  a 
narrow  slip  of  paper.  The  editor  is  a  stout 
man  in  tarbush,  blue  serge,  and  yellow  elastic- 
sided  boots,  with  two  warts  on  his  nose,  and  a 
deep  blue  dimple  on  his  chin ;  he  writes  in  a 
li^-ht  overcoat  and  a  rug-  over  his  knees,  for  it 
is  a  very  cold  winter — clouds  half-way  over 
the  blue  sky,  and  you  must  shut  your  win- 
dows by  five. 

He  has  just  finished  a  slip  of  copy  :  he 
rinofs  a  bell,  and  there  comes  in  a  little 
brown-faced  devil  in  a  tarbush,  blue  gown, 
bare    brown   legs,   and   slippers.      "  May  you 


8G        AN    ARABIC    EDITOR    AND    BRITISEI    TIIADK. 

see  the  office  ?      Of  course  " — and  out  wo,  o-o 

o 

to  the  left-hand  wing  of  the  palace.  Here 
are  about  six  bare  rooms,  all  open  to  the 
others,  the  plaster  peeling  here  and  there  from 
the  hiafh  walls.  Here  stand  the  cases  of 
curly  Arabic  type — bigger  than  ours,  because 
the  language  has  more  symbols  :  here  are 
the  bare-legged  compositors  at  work.  In  the 
next  room  the  paper  is  going  to  press  on  the 
old-fashioned  sort  of  machine ;  as  the  white- 
turbaned,  brown-legged,  white  bicycle-skirted 
native  turns  at  the  wheel  for  his  life,  the  half- 
printed  sheets  swing  slowly  over,  one  after  an- 
other, a  maze  of  twirls  and  dots  and  quiggles 
that  you  would  say  no  man  on  earth  could  read. 
And  not  many  can.  The  sub-editors  can, 
of  course — four  grave-faced  young  men  in  the 
inevitable  tarbush  and  overcoat,  solemnly 
translating  from  the  '  Times '  :  they  salaam 
respectful!}'-,  and  when  the  Englishman,  who 
looks  as  if  he  had  plenty  money,  returns  their 
salute,  as  being  brother  journalists,  it  sur- 
prises them  much.  "  But,"  says  the  editor, 
"our  circulation   is   as  large    as    any  in   the 


FIVE   THOUSAND    COPIES    DAILY.  8/ 

East,  but  not  large  enough  to  necessitate  a 
rotary  machine :  yet  we  sell  five  thousand 
copies  daily ;  it  is  something  in  a  place  like 
this.  It  is  difficult :  other  native  papers  are 
subsidised  by  France  or  Turkey  or  others ; 
we,  because  we  are  independent,  must  shift 
for  ourselves.  Still  it  grows  and  grows  :  our 
paper  is  read  in  India  and  Somaliland." 

This  seemed  to  me  the  opportunity  to  find 
out  the  native  view  of  things  in  Egypt,  and 
I  began  to  ask  questions.  Remembering  my 
discontented  pasha,  I  asked  whether  there 
was  any  native  feeling  to  the  effect  that  there 
were  too  many  English  officials  and  too  much 
taxes.  He  said  there  were  many  Englishmen 
in  the  Government  certainly,  and  no  doubt 
the  people  would  say  that  they  would  rather 
not  have  foreigners ;  but,  for  his  part,  he 
didn't  think  there  were  too  many  to  do  the 
work.  As  for  the  taxes,  they  have  gone  down 
near  a  million  since  1882,  but  they  are  still 
very  high  for  a  poor  country.  They  do  not 
work  out  the  same  everywhere,  but  in  some 
districts  they  come  to  40  per  cent  of  people's 


S8        AN    ARABIC    EDITOR    AND    BRITISH    TRADE. 

whole  income.  Try  that  in  England  !  And 
on  the  top  of  it  prices  are  falling  here,  as 
everywhere  else  :  nobody's  fault.  Last  cotton 
crop  stood  for  a  loss  of  something  like  three 
millions  as  compared  with  the  year  before — 
and  that  in  a  country  whose  total  budget 
runs  under  eleven  millions  on  each  side.  And 
until  the  Khalifa  is  smashed  at  Omdurman 
the  army  will  want  every  piastre,  money  will 
still  be  scarce,  and  things  will  not  loosen — • 
unless  England  helps. 

"  Then  there  is  another  thing,"  proceeded 
the  editor.  *'  I  do  not  think  you  do  enough 
for  native  education.  In  two  ways  you  might 
help  it.  First,  in  the  way  of  helping  primary 
education.  I  think  it  would  be  well  to  give 
a  small  subsidy  to  deserving  teachers  in 
primary  schools,  who  are  very  poorly  paid. 
And  secondly,  it  would  be  well  to  subsidise 
scientific  journals — not  political,  you  under- 
stand, but  purely  scientific  and  intended  for 
popular  education." 

"But  is  there  any  such  thing  in  Cairo?" 
I  asked. 


A   VARIED    TABLE    OF    CONTENTS.  89 

Orientals  do  not  blush  red ;  but  I  could 
see  my  editor  blushing  inwardly  as  he  re- 
plied. "  Yes,"  he  said,  ingenuously  ;  "  we 
have  one  such  of  our  own.  Here  is  a  copy 
of  it." 

Of  course  I  couldn't  read  it,  but  if  all  in 
it  was  as  good  as  the  list  of  contents  it  must 
be  a  useful  and  deserving  publication  indeed. 
It  begins,  of  course,  at  the  back,  like  all 
Arabic  works,  and  then  breaks  out  into  an 
illustrated  jubilee  article  on  progress  during 
the  Queen's  reign,  with  an  incidental  sketch 
of  the  whole  history  of  European  culture, 
and  adorned  with  portraits  of  the  Queen  and 
her  Prime  Ministers.  The  blocks  would  hardly 
be  taken  by  '  Black  and  White/  but  all  the 
same  Lord  Eosebery  is  plainly  distinguishable 
from  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  Then  follows 
a  translation  of  a  paper  read  before  the  Smith- 
sonian Institute,  a  brief  essay  on  the  Moral 
Ideal,  and  a  paper  on  crystals.  Then  comes 
the  Family  Doctor,  with  simple  prescriptions 
for  various  complaints,  the  ladies'  page,  warn- 
ing the  fair  against  deleterious  aids  to  beauty, 


90        AN    ARABIC    EDITOR    AND    BRITISH    TRADE. 

and  tlie  answers  to  correspondents  desiring  to 
know  anything  from  the  hest  way  of  taking 
stains  out  of  silk  to  the  solution  of  a  theorem 
in  geometry.  In  short,  it  has  everything  for 
the  learned  as  for  the  learner  ;  and  when  sub- 
sidies to  popular  scientific  journals  begin  in 
Egypt,  I  make  no  doubt  it  will  receive  the 
most  favourable  consideration. 

The  editor  had  been  frank,  both  in  his  criti- 
cisms and  in  his  hopes.  But  he  did  not  at  all 
imply  by  what  he  stated  that  our  rule  in 
Egypt  is  a  failure.  On  that  point  he  was 
very  clear.  "  It  is  now  possible,"  said  he, 
"  that  a  fellah  should  bring  a  lawsuit  against 
a  paslia  and  win  it.  Before  the  occupation  it 
was  unheard  of.  The  taxes  may  be  high,  but 
everybody  knows  that  he  pays  only  what  the 
Government  orders.  A  man  who  has  money 
is  not  afraid  to  use  it,  instead  of  pretending 
to  be  a  beggar.  The  people  would  never  con- 
sent to  go  back  to  the  old  order  of  things. 
There  is  —  how  do  you  call  it  ?  —  there  is 
security." 

Then  the  mention  of  money  brought  him  on 


BRITISH    CAPITAL    WANTED.  91 

to  a  point  that  was  evidently  a  keen  one  with 
him,  "  Why  do  not  the  English  invest  money 
in  Egypt  ?  "  he  asked.  And  indeed  everybody 
here  asks  it.  Foreigners  are  buying  land, 
either  for  their  own  cultivation  or  to  let. 
Natives  are  buying  land,  for  Mussulmans 
are  forbidden  to  lend  on  usury  :  they  creep 
round  the  prohibition  often  by  taking  their 
interest  in  produce,  but  land  is  their  best 
investment.  It  pays  8  to  10  per  cent,  and 
you  are  as  sure  of  getting  your  due  in  Egypt 
nowadays  as  you  are  in  England. 

Yet  British  capital  goes  neither  into 
Egyptian  land  nor  any  whither  else.  The 
Cairo  electric  tramways  are  Belgian,  the  gas 
is  French,  the  water  French  and  Government, 
the  railways  French  and  Government.  No- 
thing British  except  Cook  and  one  narrow- 
gauge  railway.  There  are  not  six  British 
shops  in  Cairo.  "  Why  do  you  not  do  it  ? " 
asked  the  editor  again.  "  It  would  do  good 
to  Egypt,  which  has  no  capital  of  its  own  ;  it 
would  do  good  to  England  by  increasing  her 
influence    in   the    country.      And    it   is   good 


92        AN    ARABIC   EDITOR    AND    BRITISH    TRADE. 

business.     Will  you  not  say  that  to  British 
investors  ? " 

I  told  him  plainly  I  had  little  influence 
with  British  capitalists,  but  that  I  would 
mention  it ;  and  I  hereby  do.  I  do  it  with 
the  more  confidence  in  that  I  find  the  matter 
referred  to  in  Beport  No.  391  of  the  Foreign 
Office  Miscellaneous  Series — a  monograph  on 
British  trade  which  every  British  trader  would 
do  well  to  read  twice.  It  can  be  bought  either 
directly  or  through  any  bookseller  for  2^d., 
and  that  being  so,  I  am  not  going  to  waste 
my  time  and  yours  making  an  abstract  of  it. 
It  tells  the  usual  weary  story — foreigners  con- 
tent with  smaller  profits,  excessive  rates  of 
commission  charged  by  English  agents,  un- 
elastic  terms  of  credit,  incompetent  travellers. 
We  are  ahead  of  any  other  nation,  it  is  true 
— well  ahead  ;  but  our  lead  is  not  increasing. 
In  all  other  ways  our  work  in  Egypt  may 
make  all  of  us  proud,  but  the  British  trader 
is  not  making  the  most  of  his  chances.  Gov- 
ernment would  be  glad  enough  to  accept 
British   tenders ;    only  often   they  are   either 


KIND    OF    GOODS    WANTED.  93 

too  high  or  not  according  to  the  specifications, 
or  else  they  do  not  come  in  at  all.  It  seems 
that  we — we  with  pinched  manufacturers  and 
workless  workmen — are  too  proud  to  take  the 
trouble  to  supply  the  sort  of  things  that 
Egypt  wants.  We  ought  to  remember  two 
things.  First,  Egypt  is  Eastern  in  that  it 
wants  things  cheap  ;  not  too  good,  but  just 
good  enough  for  their  purpose.  Perhaps  it 
ought  to  want  the  very  best  :  only  it  doesn't. 
Second,  if  Egypt  is  Eastern  in  its  require- 
ments, it  is  Western — while  England  is  here 
— in  its  integrity.  As  the  editor  says,  there 
is  security. 


94 


VIII. 

WATER. 

THE  FIELDS  OP  EGYPT  —  WHAT  THE  NILE  IS  TO  EGYPT  —  THE 
BARRAGE— THE  CULTIVATION  OF  LOWER  EGYPT — HISTORY  OP 
THE   BARRAGE— THE   RESERVOIR   AT   ASSOUAN. 

December  31. — Br-r-r-r !  This  the  land  of 
sunshine !  As  the  omnibus  train  jolted  out 
of  Cairo  I  shivered  in  my  long  overcoat.  The 
other  passengers  in  the  long,  second  -  class 
carriage — it  was  a  Government  carriage,  and 
it  was  like  a  rejected  cattle  -  van  fitted  up 
with  worn-out  seats  from  a  third-rate  village 
ale-house — were  shivering  worse  than  I.  Is 
not  this  the  coldest  Egyptian  winter  within 
the  memory  of  man  ?  Sitting  on  the  little 
l)latform  outside  the  carriage  was  a  black- 
veiled  woman,  with  a  child  arrayed  like  a 
rainbow  ;  propriety  would  not  allow  that  she 


A    riCTURESQUE    LANDSCAPE.  95 

came  Inside  with  the  men,  and  how  she 
shivered  I  should  not  like  to  think.  From 
time  to  time  there  passed  along  the  train  a 
shaggy  Arab  selling  bread. 

The  train  limped  rheumatically  at  about  a 
couple  of  miles  an  hour  through  the  fields 
of  Egypt.  Nobody  could  call  Egypt  a  beauti- 
ful country,  but  nobody  could  deny  that  it 
is  a  picturesque  one.  Under  the  steely 
clouds  green  and  brown  fields  stretched  out 
on  either  hand.  They  were  all  split  up  into 
tiny  squares  by  tiny  embankments  and  tiny 
ditches  now  dry ;  tinier  ditches  still  ran 
alonof  each  furrow.  Here  and  there  was  a 
native  hoeing  or  pulling  turnips  or  washing 
them  ;  here  and  there  a  little  bllndfoldt^d 
fawn  cow  was  treadmilling  round  a  creaking 
water  -  wheel,  raising  water  by  an  endless 
chain  of  earthen  buckets,  all  leaking  more 
or  less — some  with  holes  through  their  bot- 
toms. Presently  you  would  pass  a  group  of 
palms  encircling  white,  low  houses,  with  what 
looked  like  a  thatch  that  had  been  put  on 
with    a    pitchfork,    but   was    really    the    in- 


96  WATER. 

habitants'  store  of  dry  brushwood  fuel.     The 
country  looked  poor,  but  very  fertile. 

I  was  pfoinsr  to  see  the  reason  of  its  fer- 
tility.     At  last  the  train  laboriously  stopped 
at   a   platform  with   "Barrage"   written  up. 
I  found   myself  accosted   by  two  boys  with 
a  trolley  :    "  You   belongs  Mr  Joseph,    sir  ? " 
they    were    asking.       Mr    Joseph    was    the 
engineer  in  charge  of  the  Barrage,  and  for 
the  moment  I  did  belong  to  him.     So  I  sat 
on  the  trolley,  and  off  they  went  at  a  pace 
which  would  have  lost  the  train.     Presently 
we   ran    under   a   castellated    arch,    and    the 
Nile    appeared  —  the    ancient   Nile,    floating 
grey    and    stately,    not    hurrying    itself,    be- 
tween low,  yellow  banks.     We  were  out  on 
a    bridge    now  —  a    broad    bridge    of    many 
arches,    with    yellow    stone    parapets.      Then 
we  ran   on  to  the  land   again,   and    beyond, 
just    after    a    shorter    bridge    over    a    broad 
canal,  was  just  such  another  long,  parapeted 
bridire  over  the  second   p^reat  branch  of  the 
Nile. 

Nothing  very  much  in  that.     But  presently 


EGYPT    IS    THE    NILE.  97 

the  engineer  came  out  and  began  to  tell  me 
all  about  it.  A  good  man  was  the  engineer 
to  look  at — broad-shouldered  and  lissom,  with 
a  straight,  resolute,  British  face,  as  carefully 
shaven  as  if  he  lived  in  Piccadilly.  No  shoddy 
nor  backsheesh,  thought  I,  and  no  red  tape 
either,  when  you  get  Englishmen  of  this 
stamp  at  work.  And  then  he  began  to  ex- 
plain ;  but  to  explain  altogether  I  must  go 
back  to  the  very  beginning. 

Egypt  is  the  Nile.  That  is  no  epigram 
or  figure  of  speech  :  the  street  I  tread  on 
in  Cairo,  the  beef  and  potatoes  I  take  for 
lunch  —  they  are  just  solidified,  organified, 
vitalised  Nile.  Every  rod  of  tilled  land  in 
Egypt  was  washed  hither  from  the  Abys- 
sinian mountains,  and  laid  down  to  fertilise 
the  desert,  by  the  Nile.  The  great  river 
not  only  gives  water  to  a  rainless  land,  it 
makes  the  very  soil.  If  the  land  is  hardened 
by  the  brown,  mud-bearing  water  each  flood- 
time,  it  will  bear  well ;  if  not,  it  will  soon 
go  back  to  desert  again.  If  the  water  is 
not  drained  off  after  flood-time  the  flat  land 


98 


"WATER. 


will  become  waterlogged.  And  if  the  full 
Nile  should  burst  its  banks  the  land  will 
become  a  lake.  The  Nile  is  Egypt's  all  in 
all  —  to  be  trained  and  cockered,  filled  up 
now,   emptied  out  then,   coaxed   into   giving 


The  banks  of  tht  Nile. 

the  greatest  possible  life  and  leaving  behind 
the  least  possible  death.  Egypt  is,  of  all 
others,  the  land  of  the  engineer :  he  makes 
or  unmakes  it,  enlarges  or  diminishes  it,  ac- 
cording as  he  succeeds  or  fails  in  managing 


THE  BARRAGE.  99 

tbo  Nile.  The  British  engineers  in  this  coun- 
try are  making  it — quite  literally  and  visibly 
and  palpably  making  Egypt. 

The  Barrage  is  one  of  the  greatest  pieces 
of  Egypt-making  in  the  country.     When  you 
come  to  walk  over  it,  and  look  back  on  it, 
and  down  from  it,  and  up  at  it  from  jutting 
piers,  you  see  that  it  is  not  the  big  bridge 
it  first  appeared,  but  an  enormous  dam,  with 
locks  and  weirs.     In  each  arch  are  a  couple 
of  gates,  one  above  the  other  ;  they  are  raised 
or   lowered    by   a   travelling  -  winch    on    the 
parapet    above.      The   water   can   be   passed 
under,  or  over,  or  between  them,  regulating 
the  Nile.     Regulating  the  Nile  means  regu- 
lating  the   Canals.      East   and   west   of  the 
Barrage,    and    from    its    apex    between    the 
Rosetta    and    Damietta    branches,    take    off 
three  great  canals ;    each  makes  a  province. 
When   the   river   is   high    the   gates   of   the 
Barrage   are    opened,   and  let   off  the  water 
down   its   natural   channels ;    when   it   is   at 
its   lowest,    in    early  summer,  the   gates   are 
closed,  the  Bosetta   and   Damietta   estuaries 


100  WATER. 

go  all  but  dry.  The  life  -  giving  water  is 
held  up  at  the  Barrage,  and  turned  into  the 
Canals.  You  only  realise  what  a  river-by- 
itself  the  Nile  is,  when  you  understand  that 
one  of  its  chief  functions  is  not  to  run  into 
the  sea. 

To  understand  better,  you  must  know  that 
there  are  two  systems  of  cultivation  in  Egypt. 
In  Lower  Egypt  —  that  is,  the  Delta  —  and 
one  district  of  Upper  Egypt  the  land  is 
watered  by  what  are  called  summer  canals ; 
in  the  rest  of  the  country  the  land  is  watered 
and  manured  together  by  letting  the  flood 
Nile  over  it.  On  this  system,  fields  can  be 
cultivated  only  in  winter,  when  the  water 
runs  ofl*  them,  between  the  flood  and  the 
drought.  Lower  Egypt  is  cultivated  all  the 
year  round ;  sugar  and  cotton,  which  require 
water  in  plenty  but  yet  in  moderation,  can 
be  grown,  and  two  or  three  crops  of  vege- 
tables raised  in  a  year.  The  Barrage  has 
given  the  necessary  water  for  these  crops ; 
and  you  will  see  the  benefit  of  it  by  the  fact 
that,  since  it  has   been   working,  the  cotton 


THE  BARRAGE.  101 

crop  alone  has  gone  up  from  a  little  under 
three  to  well  over  six  million  hundredweight 
annually.  Think  what  that  means  —  more 
than  doubling  the  yield  of  the  country.  If 
we  had  done  nothing  else  in  Egypt  at  all 
we  should  have  justified  ourselves  by  this 
work  alone. 

But  credit  where  credit  is  due ;  the  concep- 
tion and  first  building  of  the  Barrage  are  due 
to  a  Frenchman— Mougel  Bey — in  Mahomet 
All's  time,  nearly  sixty  years  ago.  Only  it 
took  twenty  years  to  make,  and  even  then 
was  not  finished ;  only  the  Rosetta  half  had 
been  used,  and  you  can  see  the  curve  in  it 
to  this  day  where  the  vast  structure  bulged 
before  the  pressure  of  the  water.  For  the 
Barrage  rests  on  a  poor  foundation  of  fine 
mud  and  sand ;  it  has  an  artificial  floor  and 
aprons  of  masonry  ;  still,  under  all  is  only 
mud  and  sand.  So,  in  1883,  the  great  work 
was  officially  declared  worthless  ;  and  then 
came  along  Sir  Colin  Moncriefi"  and  his  men, 
and  doubled  the  wealth  of  Upper  Egypt  with 
it.      But   it  is  still  a  daring  work,   and   its 


102  WATER. 

foundation  is  still  mud  and  sand,  and  the  man 
who  has  the  nursing  of  it  has  an  anxious  life. 
Of  course,  the  French  pray  for  its  burstin^^ 
nightly,  and  prophesy  it  weekly — only,  it  has 
not  yet  burst.  At  high  Nile  springs  appear 
beneath  it ;  as  I  walked  along  it  we  came  to 
a  gang  of  natives  vociferously  working  at 
what  looked  like  a  drill  right  through  the 
bridge.  They  have  made  holes  right  down 
through  the  piers,  and  pressed  in  cement 
until  what  went  down  one  came  up  at  an- 
other. So  now  it  has  a  solid  floor,  it  is 
hoped  ;  and  the  Caisse  de  la  Dette  has  ad- 
vanced money  to  build  a  couple  of  weirs  be- 
low it,  which  will  halve  the  head  of  water 
on  it.  It  is  too  vital  to  Egypt  even  to  chance 
a  break- down. 

All  this  about  the  Barrage,  because  it  is 
the  biggest  and  the  most  beneficent  and  the 
easiest  to  see  with  your  own  eyes  of  the  good 
things  which  England  has  given  Egypt.  Her 
gifts  have  been  many — internal  peace,  justice, 
honest  administration — but  water  is  the  best 
gift  of  all.     In  the  old  days,  before  we  came, 


IRRIGATION    OF   EGYPT.  103 

there  was  not  so  much  water ;  which  means 
there  was  not  so  much  Egypt.  What  there 
was  was  turned  on  to  benefit  the  rich,  on  to 
the  Pasha's  fields  and  the  Governor's ;  the 
poor  man  had  to  wait  and  see  if  there  was 
any  left  when  they  had  done.  Nowadays  he 
knows  that  while  there  is  a  drop  of  water 
he  will  get  his  fair  share  of  it.  And  water 
is  the  one  thing  he  wants,  for  it  means  crops 
or  no  crops,  wealth  or  ruin,  life  or  death. 

The  irrigation  of  Egypt  is  not  finished  yet. 
There  is  still  a  vast  deal  to  be  done,  especially 
in  the  way  of  drainage.  It  is  not  enough  to 
bring  water  to  the  land  ;  it  must  be  taken 
away  again.  Land  can  be  made  out  of  desert 
by  water ;  but  there  is  also  much  that  can 
be  made  by  drains  out  of  swamp.  Before  the 
British  engineers  took  things  in  hand  Lower 
Egypt  either  had  no  drains,  or  it  was  a  hope- 
less tangle  of  unfertile  drains  and  fertilising 
canals  running  into  each  other,  and  cancelling 
each  other's  work.  That  was  Egypt  all  over. 
Now  new  drains  are  being  made  everywhere, 
and   old   ones    siphoned    under    canals    they 


104  WATER. 

empty  into.  Large  areas  of  salt  marsh,, 
especially  round  Alexandria,  are  now  good 
land,  letting  well  and  teeming  M-itli  necessary 
supplies  for  the  great  port.  There  is  plenty 
more  marsh  left  to  work  on.  It  is  a  work 
of  time,  and  it  is  a  work  of  money — and  only 
when  you  know  how  tight  money  has  always 
been  in  Egypt  can  you  appreciate  the  work 
of  Sir  Colin  Moncrieff  and  Sir  William  Garstin 
and  their  men.  Only  money  is  all  right  just 
now  ;  in  two  years  the  Caisse  —  perhaps  a 
little  ashamed  of  its  close  -  fistedness  about 
the  Dongola  campaign — has  granted  out  of 
its  idle  reserve  nearly  a  million  for  irrigation 
and  drainage.  Egypt's  money  could  not  be 
better  spent  for  Egypt's  good. 

One  more  great  work  remains  —  the  pro- 
jected reservoir  at  Assouan.  If  the  Nile 
could  be  held  up  and  stored  there,  then 
Upper  as  well  as  Lower  Egypt  would  rejoice 
in  two  crops  a-year,  sugar  could  be  produced 
enormously,  the  cultivable  area  of  Lower 
Egypt  once  again  vastly  increased ;  above 
all,     the    very    possibility    of    water    famine 


A    NEW    EESERVOIR.  105 

would  be  done  away  for  ever.  The  plan 
has  been  considered  and  approved  by  a  cap- 
able mternatlonal  commission.  Only  the 
reservoir  would  cost  five  millions.  It  would 
pay  Egypt  over  and  over  again,  and  the 
Caisse  de  la  Dette  has  an  easy  five  millions 
of  Egypt's  money.  Therefore,  because  the 
project  is  British,  would  be  executed  by 
Englishmen,  would  constitute  yet  another 
British  boon  to  Egypt  —  France  says  no. 
That  —  you  would  hardly  believe  it  of  a 
nation  which  remains  great,  in  spite  of  con- 
tinual efforts  to  be  small — that  is  France's 
Egyptian  policy. 


106 


IX. 

AN   EGYPTIAN   ETON. 

m  THE  PLAYGROUND— THE  PRIMARY  SCHOOL — A  COMICAL  CLASS 
—  MARRIAGE  IN  THE  SIXTH  STANDARD  —  AN  ELABORATE 
SYLLABUS— ENGLISH  V.  FRENCH — SCHOOL  DISCIPLINE — THE 
ANNUAL  SPORTS— THE  EFFECT  OF  IT  ALL  ON  THE  EGYPTIAN 
BOY— CHRONIC   DISHONESTY. 

January  2^  1898, — They  were  training  for 
the  sports.  In  the  sunny  playground  was 
a  row  of  big,  fat  boys — though  none  of  them 
came  within  six  inches  of  the  slim,  young 
tarbushed  English  headmaster  —  hanghig  on 
to  a  rope  made  fast  round  a  tree.  The 
trained  instructor  from  Aldershot  —  he  was 
not  so  young  nor  slim  as  he  had  been,  but 
with  muscles  all  india-rubber  and  steel  — 
was  teaching  them  the  tug -of- war.  His 
white-toothed,  black-faced,  khaki-clad  Soudan- 
ese assistants  were    helping   him.     "  Down," 


PUBLIC    INSTHUCTION    IN    EGYPT.  107 

he  cried,  and  swung  on  the  rope  as  it 
tautened.  "  Up,"  and  it  slackened  again, 
and  then  he  pointed  out  where  they  mis- 
apphed  their  force.  They  all  understood 
his  English.  A  dense  semicircle  of  boys  in 
tarbushes  and  overcoats,  standing  solemnly 
round  looking  on,  all  understood  English,  too. 

I  was  in  the  Egyptian  Eton.  It  was  one 
of  three  schools  originally  founded  for  train- 
ing teachers  capable  of  giving  instruction 
in  English  or  French.  But  now  it  contains 
primary  and  secondary  schools,  and  a  train- 
ing college  for  the  teachers ;  so  that  I  was 
in  a  fair  way  to  see  at  its  best  a  summary 
of  the  whole  system  of  public  instruction  in 
Egypt.  It  is  only  in  its  infancy  as  yet ; 
and  if  you  read  this  through  you  wiU  have 
some  idea  of  the  difficulties  that  beset  it. 

First  we  went  into  the  primary  school. 
There  were  not  many  pupils,  because  the 
fees  in  this  school  are  high  —  as  much  as 
£12  and  £15  a-year  for  day  boys — and  no- 
body comes  to  the  primary  part  except 
those  who  have  failed  elsewhere,  and  whose 


108  AN    EGYPTIAN    ETON. 

fathers  think  the  high  fee  a  guarantee  of 
high  cramming.  The  primary  course  in 
Egypt  takes  four  years :  in  the  first,  only 
Arabic  subjects  are  taught ;  after  that,  Eng- 
lish or  French  is  introduced,  and  gradu- 
ally extended  till  in  the  two  last  years  it 
takes  thirteen  hours  out  of  the  weekly . 
thirty  -  three.  All  the  instruction  in  lan- 
guages is  given  in  the  language  itself,  but 
by  natives.  Only  one  —  English  or  French 
— is  taught,  but  that  is  supposed  to  be 
taught  thoroughly. 

The  examination  for  the  primary  certificate 
is  held  in  three  centres — Alexandria,  Cairo, 
and  Assiut — besides  which  there  is  a  special 
centre  for  pupils  of  the  military  school.  This 
certificate  qualifies  its  holders  for  the  second- 
ary schools,  and  the  lower  appointments  in 
the  Civil  Service.  To  get  it  you  have  to 
pass  in  Arabic,  your  foreign  language,  arith- 
metic— only  four  sums,  but  one  must  be  in 
money  or  weights  and  measures  —  writing, 
and  geography.  None  of  them  are  very 
alarming ;    yet    a   most    astonishing    number 


TWO    CLASSES    AT    WORK.  109 

of  candidates  contrive  not  to  pass.  In  1893 
the  proportion  of  the  successful  was  hardly 
1  in  3 — 342  out  of  936.  The  teaching  they 
get  from  their  native  masters  is  not  over 
good ;  all  the  same,  the  fact  that  so  many 
are  ploughed  is  rather  promising  than  other- 
wise. It  shows  that  the  examination  is  not 
a  farce,  and  yet  the  numbers  entered  for  it 
increase  from  year  to  year. 

In  the  lowest  class  there  were  just  four 
boys  —  absurd  little  owls  with  the  gravity 
of  old  men,  dressed  in  tarbush  and  overcoat : 
they  were  getting  a  drawing  lesson  from 
an  elderly  Arab  with  a  shawl  round  his 
head ;  when  I  went  in  they  all  stood  up 
and  saluted.  In  the  highest  class  they  were 
having  an  English  lesson  from  a  young 
native  in  a  large  butterfly  tie.  Their  Eng- 
lish was  thick  and  sloppy ;  so,  if  it  came  to 
that,  was  the  master's ;  still,  you  could  under- 
stand it.  In  this  class  moustaches  were 
already  budding,  and  it  seemed  strange  to 
hear  young  men  reading  infantile  stuff  about 
the  sparrow.     You  are  not  surprised  to  find 


110  AN    EGYPTIAN    ETON. 

that  the  syllabus  for  this  class  includes 
"  Politeness  in  conversation.  Visits.  Society 
functions." 

The  great  difficulty  in  schools  like  this 
arises  from  the  fact  that  a  Mussulman  is 
never  a  boy.  As  soon  as  he  leaves  the 
harem  —  often  already  corrupted  by  the 
women — and  is  no  longer  a  baby,  he  jumps 
at  a  bound  to  being  a  man.  A  boy  will  do 
well  in  his  classes  up  to  fourteen,  fifteen, 
sixteen ;  and  then  suddenly  the  cafes  and 
hashish  and  mistresses  claim  him — and  from 
a  bright-eyed  urchin  he  becomes  a  sallow, 
flashy,  sodden,  stupid,  dissipated  man  about 
town.  In  one  primary  school  two  boys,  six- 
teen and  fourteen,  have  just  been  married — 
not  betrothed,  you  know,  but  really  married, 
and  living  with  their  wives ;  the  native 
master  saw  nothing  extraordinary  in  a  mar- 
ried sixth  standard  boy.  Under  the  former 
system  a  boy  took  his  primary  certificate  at 
fourteen  or  so ;  then  spent  six  years  getting 
his  secondary  certificate,  and  then  perhaps 
went  on  to  the  training  college,  or  the  schools 


SECONDARY    EDUCATION.  HI 

of  medicine,  or  of  law.  Consequently  he 
might  easily  be  the  father  of  a  very  fair- 
sized  family  years  before  he  started  to  earn 
a  piastre  of  his  own. 

Lately,  by  shortening  the  secondary  course 
from  five  years  to  three,  a  real  efibrt  has  been 
made  to  get  boys  out  of  hand  and  into  the 
world  before  twenty  or  so.  When  we  got  on 
to  the  top  form  of  the  secondary  school  there 
was  no  appreciable  difference  in  the  sort  of 
boy.  They  were  all  young  men,  and  not  ap- 
parently less  young  at  eighteen  than  at  four- 
teen— ^^all  tarbushed,  all  overcoated,  most  mou- 
stached,  all  grave,  as  if  school  were  a  matter 
of  life  and  death.  The  studies  of  these  upper 
primary  classes  are  a  good  deal  more  ambitious 
than  those  of  the  primaries.  The  secondary 
education  certificate  is  necessary  for  everybody 
who  wants  to  enter  the  higher  Government 
schools,  such  as  those  of  medicine  and  law,  or  to 
take  any  tolerable  position  in  the  Civil  Service. 
Therefore  it  is  worth  working  for.  For  their 
secondary  examination  they  take  up  Arabic, 
English,  or  French,  arithmetic,  geometry,  and 


112  AN    EGYPTIAN    ETON. 

algebra,  geography  and  history  and  science. 
I  was  well  educated  once,  but  if  these  Arab 
boys  learn  all  the  syllabus  tells  them  to  I  can 
only  say  they  know  a  deal  more  than  I  do. 
They  know — or  should  know — all  about  the 
mensuration  of  a  right  cylinder  and  a  right 
cone,  their  Euclid  extends  to  Book  Six,  and 
they  solve — or  not — quadratic  equations.  As 
for  science,  they  seem  to  know  all  about  things, 
such  as  sulphur  dioxide,  that  I  never  heard 
of.  Still,  if  the  scheme  is  a  bit  extensive,  it  is 
sound  also  :  in  English  they  give  special  atten- 
tion, for  example,  to  the  formation  of  nouns, 
verbs,  adjectives,  and  adverbs  from  each  other, 
and  to  the  commonest  prefixes  and  affixes — 
just  the  sort  of  thing  in  which  the  native 
usually  goes  wrong.  And  the  history  they 
learn  in  their  third  year  is  all  within  the  last 
two  generations  —  an  excellent  example  to 
many  schools  in  England. 

In  fact,  the  scheme  looks  so  thorough  tliat 
you  would  expect  the  candidate  to  go  down 
like  ninepins  before  the  examination.  So  they 
do  sometimes :  in  1891  only  28  out  of  128  got 


THE   STUDY   OF   ENGLISH.  113 

through  ;  in  1892,  only  36  out  of  90.  But  in 
the  examination  preceding  these  evil  years  115 
passed  out  of  199,  and  since  then  the  chance 
of  passing  has  again  risen  a  point  or  two  above 
evens. 

An  interesting  feature  of  the  returns  — 
which,  as  you  will  have  perceived,  I  do  not 
possess  for  the  last  few  years — is  the  proportion 
of  boys  who  take  up  English  to  those  who 
take  French.  The  school,  you  must  know,  is 
divided  into  English  side  and  French  side. 
There  is  a  good  deal  of  rivalry  between  them ; 
so  much  that  when  a  French  boy  became  good 
enough  for  the  football  team,  the  whole  fifteen 
— all  English  boys — went  to  the  headmaster 
and  respectfully  protested.  He  was  an  ex- 
ceedingly immoral  boy,  they  pointed  out, 
and  they  would  rather  not  play  with  him. 
As  it  happened,  he  wasn't  an  immoral  boy  at 
all — a  great  deal  less  so,  in  fact,  than  many  of 
them — but  that  was  their  way  of  demonstra- 
ting the  corporate  spirit  of  the  English  side. 

Now  it  is  alleged  by  many  that  the  British 
have  failed  to  take  any  root  in  Egypt,  and 


114  AN    EGYPTIAN    ETON. 

that  this  Is  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that 
Egyptians  do  not  speak  Enghsh,  but  still, 
after  all  the  years  of  occupation,  prefer  to 
learn  French.  If  you  look  at  the  figures  oi 
the  examination  for  the  Secondary  Certificate, 
they  seem  to  bear  this  theory  out.  The  pro- 
portion of  English  to  French  boys  during  four 
years  was  38  to  161,  22  to  106,  15  to  75,  16 
to  60.  But  the  figures  of  the  primary  ex- 
amination do  not  bear  this  out, — 195  to  378, 
and  337  to  599  are  the  latest  proportions  I 
have.  And  an  inspection  of  the  books  of  the 
Egyptian  Eton  backed  these  figures  up.  At 
first  the  predominance  of  pupils  leaned  enor- 
mously to  the  French  side.  But  as  the  years 
have  gone  on  the  French  numbers  have 
slowly  dwindled,  and  the  English  slowly  aug- 
mented. To-day  they  stand  as  near  as  pos- 
sible equally. 

The  difference  to-day  Is  less  numerical  than 
social.  The  best-bred  boys,  the  sons  of  Pashas, 
are  on  the  French  side.  If  you  go  into  the 
dining-room — or  rather  the  dining-rooms,  for 
the  two  sides  eat  apart — you  will  find  that  on 


THE    STUDY    OF   ENGLISH.  Ho 

the  French  side  they  understand  the  use  of 
knives  and  forks  and  spoons,  and  do  not  throw 
their  bones  under  the  table.  On  the  English 
side  it  requires  a  perpetual  struggle  to  prevent 
young  Egypt  from  committing  such  atrocities. 
But  it  is  only  natural  that  the  Pasha,  who  was 
brought  up  to  consider  French  the  official 
language  of  civilisation,  who  has  himself  talked 
French  all  his  life,  should  send  his  son  to  the 
French  side.  But  the  poorer  man,  whose  son 
must  make  his  own  career,  sends  him  to  the 
English  side.  It  is  nowadays  the  more  use- 
ful lano-uao^e — and  therein  lies  the  answer  to 
the  criticism  that  we  have  not  succeeded  in 
Egypt  because  Egyptians  still  speak  French. 
If  we  had  been  French  or  German  or  Russian, 
we  should  have  made  them  learn  our  own 
language.  Being  only  English — the  owners 
of  loyal  French  Canada,  and  half-loyal  Dutch 
Africa — we  do  not  enforce  our  own  language, 
but  let  them  find  out  the  utility  of  it  for  them- 
selves. We  are  in  no  hurry  ;  we  are  not  going 
away  ;  and  time  is  on  our  side. 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  point  of  discipline 


116  AN    EGYPTIAN    ETON. 

with  the  Egyptian  schoolboy ;  the  French 
masters  have  some  trouble  sometimes,  I  was 
told  ;  but  in  the  very,  very  rare  cases  where 
an  English  master  finds  his  classes  too  much 
for  him,  he  must  go  :  it  will  not  do  to  bring 
up  the  young  in  the  idea  that  they  may  set 
at  naught  the  authority  of  an  Englishman. 
Corporal  punishment  is  not  allowed  by  the 
Education  Department — most  foolishly,  you 
would  say,  since  it  is  the  one  punishment 
which  really  appeals  to  the  young  Egyptian, 
and  it  is  the  one  best  suited  to  his  peculiar 
besetting  vices.  Instead,  you  will  see  a  couple 
of  sad-faced  young  men,  in  short  frock-coats 
and  long  purple  shirt-fronts  and  green  ties, 
standing  up  while  their  fellows  are  at  dinner : 
these  Reguluses  are  on  bread  and  water,  but 
they  feel  the  position  so  keenly  that  they  pre- 
fer to  go  till  evening  fasting.  An  even  ex- 
tremer  torture  is  prison,  which  consists  in 
sitting  a  few  hours  in  an  empty  bathroom. 
But  the  oriental  mind  sees  no  hardship  in  sit- 
ting a  few  hours  doing  nothing ;  and  the  pen- 
ance leaves  an  offender  hardened  with  whom 


CAIRO    SCHOOLBOYS    AT    LARGE.  Il7 

a  good  thrashing  would  be  an  abiding  influ- 
ence through  life. 

The  only  occasion  when  the  Egyptian 
schoolboy  gives  trouble  is  at  the  annual 
sports.  Here  he  is  insubordinate  Indeed. 
When  the  first  meeting  was  held  many  emi- 
nent persons  were  invited  to  see  what  the 
Egyptian  schoolboy  could  do ;  doctors  were 
furnished  by  the  Education  Department  to 
tend  the  exhausted  competitors  on  their  ar- 
rival at  the  winning-post  —  only  unluckily 
they  did  not  invite  the  mounted  police.  The 
eminent  persons  duly  came ;  so  did  five  thou- 
sand Cairo  schoolboys,  for  the  meeting  was  open 
to  all  Cairo  schools.  The  half-mile  was  duly 
covered  in  three  minutes  fifteen  seconds — but, 
alas  for  the  behaviour  of  the  five  thousand  ! 
They  had  come  to  see,  and  they  meant  to 
see ;  they  evaded  or  overpowered  the  police, 
stormed  the  grand  stand,  and  came  swarming 
over  its  railings  on  to  Lord  Cromer's  toes. 
The  Under-Secretary  for  Education  went  for 
them  wildly  with  a  stick ;  the  English  masters 
present  lashed   out   like    men ;   one    of   them 


118  AN    EGYPTIAN    ETON. 

unfortunately  made  a  slight  mistake,  and 
gave  the  eldest  son  of  the  Minister  of  Edu- 
cation the  worst  gruelling  he  ever  had  in  liis 
life.  Since  then  several  powerful  squadrons 
of  mounted  police  have  always  attended  the 
annual  sports. 

And  what,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  of 
tlie  Egyptian  schoolboy  ?  Does  he  do  any 
good  in  return  for  the  patient,  intelligent, 
honest  care  his  English  masters  bestow  on 
him?  Well,  he  is  learning  to  play  footl)all, 
and  that  will  be  good  for  him  ;  only  when  a 
boy  says  to  his  master,  after  playing  tlie 
Egyptian  Sandhurst,  "  The  ground  was  too 
undulating ;  it  recalled  to  me  Hannibal's  |)as- 
sage  of  the  Alps" — why  then  you  perceive- 
that  even  football  will  not  necessarily  turn 
a  precocious  man  into  a  boy  again.  Ho  is 
astonishingly  industrious ;  the  difficulty  is 
not  to  make  him  work,  but  to  prevent  Iiini 
from  overworking :  eight  hours'  home  work, 
after  five  and  a  half  in  school,  is  by  no  means 
an  unknown  performance.  Some  of  his  work 
ill  KiiL;lisli   lit(M-nture,  wlilch   T  saw,  compares 


SHAKESPEARE.  119 

quite  well  with  that  of  University  Extension 
students  at  home ;  but,  like  theirs,  it  reads 
very  text-booky.  He  has  an  astonishing  gift 
fur  languages,  and  he  can  appreciate  a  play 
of  Shakespeare  with  ghost  or  witches  in  it, 
and  a  good  allowance  of  florid  metaphor,  no 
worse  —  perhaps  better  —  than  an  English 
schoolboy.  To  the  top  class  of  the  secondary 
school  I  was  kindly  invited  to  put  a  few 
questions.  They  were  reading  Shakespeare's 
•  Henry  the  Fourth,'  and  I  started  them  off 
on  "  Harry,  thy  wish  was  father  to  that 
thought."  Not  one  of  them  could  give  an 
explanation  of  the  metaphor  that  would  have 
satisfied  an  Englishman  —  and  yet  they  all 
understood  it  perfectly  well.  To  the  Eastern 
minds,  you  see,  such  figurative  language 
was  the  inevitable  way  of  expressing  one's 
self,  and  it  would  be  much  more  natural  to 
translate  prose  into  poetry  than  poetry  into 
prose.  Only  when  I  went  up  to  the  Teachers' 
training  class  and  started  them  on  '  Hamlet,' 
I  saw  they  had  enough  of  it.  I  happened  to 
know   what     "  unhousel'd,    disappointed,    un- 


120  AN   EGYPTIAN    ETON. 

anel'd,"  meant ;  so  far  I  was  a  professor. 
But  rashly  I  asked  one  skimpy  young  man 
whether  Hamlet  was  really  mad  or  not. 
"There  are  three  theories,"  he  began.  And 
I  collapsed. 

But  at  the  end  of  it  all  the  Egyptian 
schoolboy  is  parrot-like  in  his  unintelligence, 
incorrigible  in  his  inaccuracy,  hopelessly  fatu- 
ous in  his  dishonesty.  He  understands  ordin- 
ary English,  if  you  ask  him  questions,  un- 
commonly well ;  but  he  will  reel  you  off  a 
page  of  text-book,  understanding  the  mean- 
ing of  each  word,  but  without  an  idea  of  the 
connected  sense  of  it.  It  is  all  one  to  hkn  if 
he  writes  -f-  or  —  :  it  is  only  a  difference  of 
one  stroke,  and  why  should  the  pedant  of  a 
Westerner  bother  which  he  puts  ?  He  fudges 
freely  in  examinations,  and  fudges  most 
clumsily.  At  a  recent  examination  three 
boys  all  brought  in  little  cribs,  consisting  of 
tips  written  on  their  blotting-paper.  They 
were  discovered,  of  course,  and  hauled  before 
the  head.  The  first  said  :  "I  missed  a  lesson, 
sir,  in  consequence  of  ill-health  ;  and    to   fix 


UNINTELLIGENT    AND    DISHONEST.  121 

It  in  my  memory  I  wrote  it  down,  and  acci- 
dentally, sir,  the  paper  came  on  to  my  desk 
to-day.  It  is  true,  O  sir  ;  by  God  it  is  true  ! " 
The  master  gently  pointed  out  that  one  does 
not  write  ordinary  notes  on  blotting-paper, 
nor  can  blotting-paper  move  on  to  a  desk  by 
itself.  But  the  other  two  told  exactly  the 
same  lie  in  exactly  the  same  words.  They 
knew  that  they  would  not  be  believed ;  they 
knew  that  they  would  be  punished  more 
lightly  if  they  told  the  truth.  But  they 
only  repeated,  "It  is  true,  0  sir ;  by  God  it 
is  true  1 " 

Will  they  ever  make  a  boy  of  him  ?  If 
skill  and  trying  can  do  it,  they  will ;  and  if 
he  can  be  made  a  boy  he  can  be  made  a  man. 
But  it  is  work  against  the  collar,  and  it  will 
cot  be  done  to-day  or  to-morrow. 


122 


X. 

A   DAY    IN    THE    DESERT. 

AN   ARAB   HOUSE— "good   ALL    RIGHT   IIEGIN" — A   SEA   OP  SAND 
— A   GUIDE   AT  FAULT — LOST   IN   THE   DESERT. 

January  4. — The  camels  were  kneeling  down 
on  the  road  outside  the  village.  Half  an 
hour  before  I  had  awakened  on  the  floor 
of  the  best  room  of  the  richest  Arab  in 
the  place  —  the  house  white  and  solid  and 
stately  from  the  outside,  unplastered  mud 
walls  and  unglazed  window  -  holes  inside  — 
native  Egypt  all  over.  I  went  to  the  door, 
and  all  but  walked  out — into  nothing.  Over 
the  doorstep  was  a  sheer  drop  of  twenty 
feet  into  the  yard,  where  cows,  donkeys, 
dogs,  and  men  pigged  together  in  the  dirt 
of  content.      The    way   down    was    to    screw 


MOUxNTlNG    A    CAMEL.  123 

yourself  round  the  left-hand  doorpost  on  to 
a  flight  of  stone  steps  :  in  front  of  the  best 
room  — "  Some  day,"  said  Said,  "  we  are 
going  to  make  another  room  there "  —  was 
only  vacancy  and  a  few  loose,  rotten  beams, 
on  which  the  skinny  fowls  live  in  mid  -  air. 
In  front  was  some  more  of  the  village  — 
fine  plastered  houses  where  it  could  be 
seen  from  the  road,  a  maze  of  unbaked 
mud,  dead  walls,  and  blind,  meaningless 
enclosures  where  it  could  not.  But  beyond 
that,  again,  was  an  embroidery  of  palm- 
trees  against  the  flush  of  dawn. 

By  the  time  we  got  down  to  the  camels, 
over  the  heaps  of  rubble,  through  the 
broken  walls,  across  the  field  of  springing 
clover,  past  the  white  figure  on  a  carpet 
kneeling  and  bobbing  towards  Mecca,  over 
the  tilting  planks  that  bridge  the  Canal 
where  the  women  were  dipping  water  —  by 
that  time  everything  was  swathed  in  the 
grey  morning  mist.  The  camels  were  kneel- 
ing down,  and  we  climbed  on,  side  -  saddle. 
Then     a    furious    heave    backwards,    a    hurl 


12 -4  A    DAY    IN    THE    DESERT. 

forwards,  a  milder  pitch  backwards  again, 
and  the  beast  had  unjointed  its  legs  and 
was  going. 

They  told  me  the  action  of  a  camel — and 
especially  a  running  camel,  a  /ic^m  — spelt 
sea- sickness ;  but  really  its  walk  is  not  very 
much  rougher  than  a  rough  -  actioned  horse's, 
its  trot  is  much  the  same,  only  a  trifle  more 
so,  and  its  pace  for  travelling  is  an  amble. 
These  were  running  camels,  for  we  were 
going  forty  -  five  miles  into  the  desert  to  a 
Coptic  monastery,  and  no  baggage  camel 
could  do  that  in  the  eleven  hours  of  day- 
light. These  were  the  genuine  dromedary 
— "  good  all  right  hegin,"  said  Said  They 
wore  a  petulant,  supercilious,  half- vicious, 
half- petted  expression,  carrying  their  heads 
very  high  and  very  far  forward,  as  if  they 
disliked  the  smell  of  everything  and  every- 
body, but  more  especially  of  themselves. 
But  Said  said  they  were  all  right  hegin, 
and  I  was  happy. 

As  we  swung  out  on  the  dusty  road 
the  great  brown  rugged   Pyramids  appeared 


A    WORLD    OF    SAND.  125 

towering  above  us  :  then  the  mist  cleared, 
and  the  sun  caught  them,  and  another 
pyramid,  less  solemn,  laughed  in  the  deep 
blue  water  of  the  Canal.  We  turned  sharp 
to  the  right  on  to  the  sand,  and  left  behind 
us  the  smoke  that  said  the  Mena  House 
Hotel  was  beginning  to  boil  water  for  the 
bedroom  cup  of  tea.  We  plashed  steadily 
through  the  bare  sand,  marked  with  un- 
numbered tracks  of  all  the  camels  and 
sand-sleighs  and  donkeys  of  a  Cairo  season. 
Then  striking  out  through  a  little  defile 
between  sandhills,  the  tracks  all  suddenly 
left  us.  The  sand  hardened  under  the 
camels'  feet,  and  we  were  out  in  the  desert. 
Out  in  a  new  world  —  a  world  of  sand. 
The  flat,  deep  -  green  fields,  the  flat,  white 
houses,  the  streaks  of  blue  Canal,  and  the 
grey,  rolling  river  of  Egypt,  were  clean 
gone,  as  if  they  belonged  to  another  world. 
This  world  was  all  yellows  and  browns — all 
sand.  The  braying  donkeys  and  the  bawl- 
ing Arabs  had  floated  away  into  the  land 
of  dreams,    and    we    had    entered    into    the 


126  A    DAY   IN    THE    DESERT. 

land  of  silence.  Mile  after  mile,  hour  after 
hour,  the  camels  swung  on  through  sheer 
sand  and  silence.  It  was  not  without  form, 
for  the  sand  was  banked  up  into  low  ridges, 
little  round  hills,  smooth  slopes  like  sand- 
drifts,  long-rising  glacis,  steep-sinking  gullies  ; 
but  it  was  without  life.  Here  and  there 
the  broken  dints  of  a  gazelle-track,  now  and 
again  the  dotted  hole  of  a  jerboa's  burrow, 
once  the  shining  skull  and  thighbone  of  a 
dead  camel.  These  came  at  intervals  of  an 
hour ;  but  no  gazelle,  no  jerboa,  no  camel 
did  we  see  :  the  whole  day  I  saw  one  bird, 
and  no  other  living  thing  save  ourselves. 
Only  sand,  sand  as  limitless  and  as  barrenly 
changeless  as  the  sea  —  now  darker,  now 
brighter;  now  clear,  now  shaded  with  basalt 
pebbles ;  now  a  foreshortened  rise  to  the 
sky  -  line  twenty  yards  ahead,  now  a  pros- 
pect of  a  couple  of  miles  of  heave  and  dip 
— but  always  sand,  sand,  sand. 

We  knelt  down,  and  dismounted  twenty 
minutes  for  lunch  —  no  more,  for  daylight 
must  be  economised  if  we  were  to  make  our 


SUN    AND    SAND. 


127 


goal  by  dark.  Hegin  carry  riders,  not  bur- 
dens. Our  stores  had  all  gone  on  before  by 
a  baggage-camel,  to  the  monastery,  with  the 
hegins'  fodder ;  after  lunch  we  had  but  a 
half-pint  of  water  between   two   white  men, 


Laden  camels. 

the  guide,  and  the  barefooted  camel  grooms 
who  toiled  after  us  all  day. 

We  were  off  again  through  the  aching 
desert.  As  the  sun  got  up  to  its  strength 
the  sand  glared  into  my  eyes  till  there  was 


128  A    DAY    IN    THE    DESERT. 

nothing  to  see  but  a  blur  of  sand.  I  looked 
between  my  camel's  small  ears,  over  its  con- 
temptuous nose — high  up  as  if  ignoring  me — 
and  saw  only  desert.  I  looked  at  a  sandhill 
eastward,  then  turned  and  saw  it  again  west- 
ward. Far  away  on  the  horizon  I  saw  a  long 
grove  of  dark-leaved  trees,  with  a  break  in 
the  middle  showing  clear  water — only  I  knew 
there  was  no  such  thing.  The  monotonous 
lilt  of  the  dromedary's  amble  ran  one  thing 
into  another  :  they  no  longer  had  any  out- 
lines or  perspectives,  distances,  shapes,  or 
colours.  Before,  behind,  right,  left,  the  whole 
borderless  desert  was  a  swimming  confusion 
of  sand, 

I  began  to  feel  sleepy  and  droop  in  the 
back.  I  swung  my  leg  over  the  pommel  and 
settled  to  ride  astraddle ;  at  the  end  of  an 
hour  I  decided  I  would  sit  side-saddle  on 
the  off-side  for  another  hour,  then  change 
and  ease  the  strain  again.  So  on  I  rode, 
on,  on,  looking  steadily  at  the  great  yellow 
blotch  before  me.  Presently  I  began  to  ache 
again  :  it  must  surely  be  the  hour  and  time 


A    GUIDE    AT    FAULT.  129 

to  change  over.  I  pulled  out  my  watch — 
and  it  was  just  eighteen  minutes. 
I  But  by  now  the  sun  was  dipping  down 
again  under  our  hat  brims.  By  now  Said 
had  dismounted  from  his  flagging  beast ;  his 
white  linen  kilted  up  round  his  loins,  he  was 
making  casts  to  left  and  right,  running  up 
every  little  hill  and  shading  his  eyes  for 
intense  searching  looks  before  and  about  him. 
It  was  long  past  three ;  it  was  past  four. 
It  would  be  dark  at  half- past  five;  if  we 
had  not  sighted  our  monastery  by  then  we 
were  helpless.  We  must  have  come  the 
distance  if  we  had  come  the  way. 

The  eagerness  with  which  the  guide  raced 
up  each  new  eminence,  the  strained  hope- 
fulness of  his  stare,  the  slow  disappointment 
you  could  read  in  the  relaxed  limbs,  the 
fresh  hope  renewed,  but  each  time  fainter, 
with  which  he  dashed  for  the  next  prospect 
— he  was  at  fault.  To  my  eye  one  ridge, 
one  dip,  one  hill,  was  exactly  like  every 
other.  And  by  now  the  camels  were  jaded, 
and  the  sun  was  down   over  the   rim.     We 

I 


130  A    DAY    IX    THE    Dr.SIMlT. 

had  been  riding  ten  hours,  and  must  liave 
come  fifty  miles;  our  monastery  was  only 
forty-five.  We  had  missed  it,  and  it  \v:is 
all  but  dark.  Under  a  bluff  of  loose  sand 
we  halted  the  camels  and  dismounted. 

A  night  in  the  cutting  winter  wind  of 
the  desert,  a  night  without  tent,  water,  lire, 
or  fodder,  was  the  very  best  we  had  to  look 
forward  to.  The  worst — but  just  as  the  mind 
strayed  round  to  the  remote  possibilities  up 
panted  Said. 

"  Have  you  seen.  Said  ?  " 

"  Effendim,  I  have  seen  ;  I  saw  from  the 
1-ill  back  yonder ;  come  and  see  for  your- 
sejves." 

And  he  led  us  to  the  brow  of  the  bluf!', 
and  there,  surely — yes,  there  gleamed  some- 
thing white.  The  monastery  ;  hurrah  !  It 
cah't  be  four  miles  oft';  we  will  walk,  and 
the  camels  can  follow.  So  up  got  the  patient 
camels,  and  off  we  strode,  five  miles  an  hour, 
over  sand  as  hard  and  crisp  as  the  early 
morning  snow. 

We   walked.     Now   the  sand   grew  softer, 


AN    UNPLEASANT    SITUATION.  131 

now  it  hardened  again,  now  it  was  shingle ; 
but  we  walked  fast,  and  we  seemed  to  walk 
straight.  The  blazing  crimson  and  orange 
of  the  sunset  blinded  our  eyes  to  the  white 
blob  of  the  monastery,  but  by  now  we  must 
be  almost  on  top  of  it.  Faster  and  faster 
we  walked  and  walked.  Now  crimson  and 
orange  blazed  no  more ;  it  was  really  dark 
now ;  we  had  come  five  miles ;  we  had  not 
arrived. 

"  Are  you  sure  you  saw,  Said  —  quite 
sure  ? " 

"Eifendim,"  replied  Said,  "I  thought  I 
saw  something  white." 

Nothing  white  in  sight  now.  The  guide 
was  thrown  out  utterly :  in  that  tangle, 
where  you  could  never  really  see  two  miles 
ahead,  you  might  as  well  have  groped  for 
a  button  as  for  a  building.  And  there  we 
were,  fifty-five  miles  from  home,  camels  done 
up  and  foodless,  camel-boys  starving,  thirsty, 
and  waterless,  selves  with  possible  two  days' 
food,  and  certain  less  than  one  day's  water 
— lost — clean  lost  in  the  Libyan  desert. 


132 


XL 


A   NIGHT   IN    THE   DESERT. 

THE  camel's  real  CHARACTER  —  THE  DESERT  WHITELET  —  A 
CAMEL-TRACK — ILLUSIONS  OF  THE  DESERT — THE  MONASTERY 
AT  LAST. 

January  5. — Often  enough  I  had  been  lost 
before,  only  this  was  different.  In  the  desert 
you  can  laugh  at  little  privations  as  long  as 
you  know  the  way — but  once  miss  it  in  that 
unanswerable  enigma,  that  pitiless  perplexity 
of  sand,  and  you  have  this  choice  before  you. 
You  know  that  your  Nile  lies,  perhaps,  forty 
miles  due  east  of  you  ;  only,  will  your  camels 
— Pyramid  picnic  camels,  untrained  for  the 
privations  of  long  desert  journeys — will  they 
hold  out,  foodless  and  waterless,  till  you  strike 
it?  You  know  that  your  monastery  is,  per- 
haps, within  a  mile,  almost   certainly  within 


STRANGE    SLEEPING-QUARTERS.  133 

a  dozen  miles  of  you — only  dare  you  use  up 
your  beasts,  and  provisions,  and  strength 
hunting  for  it  ?  That  was  the  agreeable 
question  we  had  to  sleep  over. 

But  the  first  thing  to  do  was  to  sleep — 
though  I,  for  one,  felt  a  kind  of  prompting 
to  walk  about  all  night  calling  aloud  for  the 
monastery  to  come  and  pick  us  up.  Yet 
that  was  soon  forgotten  in  the  new  interest 
of  the  desert.  During  the  day  it  was  merely 
a  thing  to  be  crossed,  a  thing  to  be  looked  at 
— with  interest,  certainly,  but  with  the  sort 
of  interest  one  gives  a  stranger.  Now  it  was 
become  more  than  a  stranger  —  a  friend  or 
enemy,  as  the  case  might  turn  out,  and  all 
its  moods  and  tenses  were  worth  attentive 
scrutiny. 

And,  first,  although  the  desert  can  be 
hot  at  midday,  even  in  January,  it  can  be 
bitter  cold  at  night.  I  had  never  thought 
of  the  desert  as  a  place  in  which  to  wrap 
up  warm  and  get  out  of  the  wind.  How- 
ever, there  was  not  very  much  wind,  by 
good  luck,  and  a  sand  slope  under  a  semi- 


134  A   NIGHT   IN    THE    DESERT. 

circle  of  small  basalt  boulders  gave  bed  and 
shelter. 

Said  and  the  camel-boys  disdained  the  slo23e 
and  the  boulders,  which  led  up  to  the  next 
point  of  enlightenment — the  camels.  Up  to 
then  I  had  not  appreciated  the  camel.  These 
were  bad  camels :  one,  as  I  should  have  told 
you,  gave  out  after  half  a  day,  and  another 
was  threatening  to  kneel  down  every  stride 
before  dark :  but  at  its  best  a  camel  has  none 
of  the  generosity  of  the  horse.  When  he  is 
called  on  to  work  he  makes  a  noise  somethina: 
between  a  dog's  snarl  and  a  peacock's  screech  ; 
while  he  is  at  it  he  wears  an  air  of  sulky 
superciliousness,  as  who  should  say,  "  I'm 
doing  it,  but  not  for  any  love  of  you."  Also 
at  tliis  season  of  the  year  he  has  a  disgusting 
habit  of  blowing  parts  of  his  inside  out  at  his 
mouth — a  great  pink  bladder,  which  he  puffs 
out  and  sucks  in  again  in  the  filthiest  way. 
]]ut  now  I  noticed  that  when  the  camels  lay 
down  in  the  wind  the  Arabs  carefully  lay 
down  on  the  lee  side  of  them.  There  was 
no   fodder,    but    they    pulled    up   yesterday's 


THE    RIGHT    BEAST    IN   TUE    RIGHT    PLACE.       135 

dinner  from  somewhere  in  their  insides  and 
placidly  ate  that  over  again.  Somewhere  else 
inside  them  was  a  cistern  containing  the  day 
before  yesterday's  w^ater,  of  which  they  took 
from  time  to  time  a  refreshing  pull.     He  may 


Camels  at  rest. 

be  unattractive,  the  camel,  but  in  the  desert 
he  is  the  right  beast  in  the  right  place.  He 
carries  his  stores  inside  him  ;  his  body  fur- 
nishes a  vehicle  by  day  and  a  house  by  night. 
When  there  is  no  wood  but  petrified  wood — 


136  A    NIGHT    IN    THE    DESERT. 

very  like  the  thoroughgoing  inhospitality  ot 
the  desert,  is  the  fact  that  it  petrifies  its 
wood — his  very  dung  makes  fuel.  Bless  his 
ugly  heart !  He  is  food,  drink,  travelling, 
lodging,  and  firing  all  in  one — the  William 
Whiteley  of  the  desert.  , 

And  then  the  desert  is  beautiful — cruelly 
beautiful,  but  very  solemn  and  mysterious. 
When  I  lay  down  black  night  had  dropped 
over  the  limitless  waste  of  yellow ;  we  were 
moving  in  a  thick  but  partly  transparent  veil. 
When  I  first  got  up  to  walk  myself  warm  here 
was  a  new  desert — a  desert  of  tender  blue. 
The  white  moon  rode  overhead  ;  it  seemed  to 
be  staring  close  into  your  eyes.  And  .now  the 
desert  was  no  longer  limitless.  Its  boundaries 
had  closed  in  round  us  ;  we  were  in  a  quarter- 
mile  circle  of  blue  light,  with  soft  blue  cur- 
tains all  about  us.  Behind  them  you  knew 
the  pitiless  expanse  was  there  ;  but  the  circle 
of  light  and  the  ring  of  shadow  made  us  a 
bed-chamber  in  the  middle  of  it.  It  felt 
somehow  kindlier,  more  home -like  than  it 
had  done  by  day. 


SUNRISE.  137 

Yet  again,  when  the  moon  had  gone  down, 
there  was  yet  another  desert.  The  chamber 
had  grown  smaller,  and  the  hangings  were 
changed  to  dark  grey.  There  was  still  the 
black  Island  of  the  camels,  ever  champing  at 
their  yesterday's  dinner ;  but  ten  yards  be- 
yond the  thick  shadows  muffled  all  else. 
They  were  thick,  but  not  quite  Impene- 
trable ;  and  though  you  well  knew  there 
was  nothing  living  beyond,  you  half  expected 
to  see  something  loom  up  through  them. 
Once  I  thought  I  heard  the  yap  of  a  jackal, 
but  It  was  only  the  hissing  wind  licking  down 
over  the  sand  -  slope.  The  desert  might  ad- 
vance or  withdraw  its  frontiers :  we  were 
still  always  alone  in  it. 

The  next  time  the  grey  was  different — the 
pale  no-colour  that  waits  breathlessly  to  get 
its  life  from  the  dawn.  Now  the  east  was 
reddening.  Get  up.  Said,  and  let  us  use  every 
instant  of  the  light.  A  mouthful  of  cold 
tinned  ration  ;  but  you  can't  eat  much  on  a 
dry  stomach.  We  will  strike  north-east ;  we 
may  drop  on  the  monastery,  and,  anyhow,  that 


138  A    NIGHT    IN    THE    DESERT. 

should  bring  us  on  to  the  great  desert  road  to 
the  Natron  Lakes,  while  the  camels  last.  But 
Said — true  Arab,  though  sham  Bedawin — begs 
for  lialf  an  hour,  just  one  half  an  hour,  Effen- 
(liui,  to  search  again  north-westward.  Weakly 
we  give  in  to  him,  and  off  north-westward  we 
go  again.  Slowly  as  yet,  for  the  sun  is  not  up 
enough  to  see  far  by,  and  we  may  as  well  spare 
the  camels.  Soon  Said  is  a  dot  racing  along 
the  leftward  sky-line,  lost  now,  reappearing 
half  a  mile  farther  on,  sanguinely  searching. 

Then  the  sun  comes  up  —  steps  bodily  up 
over  the  horizon  —  and  the  desert  is  yellow 
again.  And  now — what  sound  is  that  ?  Yes, 
a  yell  from  Said.  Surely  he  has  seen.  On  to 
the  camels  and  briskly  westward, 

"  Have  you  seen,  Said  ? " 

"  No  ;  but  behold  —  a  camel  track,  and  I 
know  this  place." 

And  then  presently  we  come  out  on  a  wide 
prospect — sandhills  left  and  right,  but  in  the 
middle  a  vista  over  rolling  miles  of  sand. 
"  See,  Effendim  ! "  cries  the  triumphant  Said — 
and  there — yes  ;  it  certainly  is  a  bit  of  white, 


THE  MOCKING  DESERT.         lo9 

it  surely  must  be  the  convent.  Forward  then 
briskly  ;  it  is  about  an  hour  and  a  half.  For- 
ward we  go,  an  hour,  an  hour  and  a  half,  two 
hours :  we  have  been  low  down  and  could  see 
nothing  ;  now  we  come  up  on  to  a  ridge  again. 

And  the  bit  of  white  ?  Gone !  Vanished 
■iway.  There  are  three  bits  of  white  now, 
3ach  vaguer,  each  more  distant  than  the  other. 
0  curse  this  merciless,  mocking  desert !  Three 
hours  wasted,  three  hours  of  thirst  for  the 
boys  and  exhaustion  for  the  camels — and  we 
iwelve  miles  farther  towards  Morocco,  but 
just  as  hopelessly  lost  as  ever. 

Turn  about  north-east ;  we  must  get  back 
now  or  never.  On  and  on ;  try  to  keep  a 
good  pace  without  driving  the  camels.  The 
sun  is  well  up  now ;  the  desert  is  beginning 
to  get  hot — and  very  thirsty.  But  huUoa  ! 
What  is  this  ?  A  broad  camel  track  with  the 
prints  of  the  naked  feet  of  men.  It  looks  as 
If  an  army  had  gone  over  it,  so  thick  is  it 
with  footprints.  Where  does  it  lead  to,  Said  ? 
Said  doesn't  know  :  he  has  left  off  now  even 
pretending  to  be  a  son  of  the  desert. 


l-iO  A    NIGHT    IN    THE    DESERT. 

"I  think,  Effeiidim,"  says  the  oldest  camel- 
])oy,  "  it  leads  to  a  village." 

"What  village?" 

"  I  do  not  know." 

0,  wonderful  mind  of  the  Arab ! 

However,  it  leads  north  by  east ;  along  it 
we  go.  The  latest  tracks  cannot  be  over  two 
days  old  from  the  camel -droppings — maybe 
one ;  they  went  with  baggage-camels,  a  long 
line  abreast,  and  the  men  walked  beside  them 
with  sticks.  We  may  overtake  them,  and, 
anj^how,  they  were  not  going  nowhere.  Yes ; 
here  is  their  last  night's  camp,  a  ring  of  marks 
on  the  sand — one,  two,  three,  six,  ten,  fifteen 
camels.  Forward  again !  An  hour  later  a 
couple  of  bits  of  wood  stuck  along  the  line  of 
the  track :  that  is  a  desert  sign-post.  Now, 
up  over  this  brow — and  there  is  a  broad  valley 
before  us.     "  Know  it.  Said  ?  " 

Not  Said ! 

But  suddenly  the  camel-boy  points  to  yet 
one  more  white  speck,  and  a  sheet  of  pale- 
blue.  "  Wady  Natrun,"  he  shouts.  Why, 
yes,  it  surely  must  be ;  the  blue  is  the  Natron 


WALLS    AT    LAST.  141 

Lake,  and  the  white — well,  we  don't  believe 
in  white  spots  any  more,  but  the  monastery 
cannot  be  far  away.  Once  more  we  go  on 
briskly  under  the  spur  of  unquenchable  hope. 

Half  an  hour ;  an  hour.  Are  you  going  to 
mock  us  once  again,  torturing  desert?  The 
white  is  white  faces  of  sandhill  now,  and  the 
pale  blue  is  growing  slowly,  remorselessly  into 
white  also.  But  the  white  must  be  surely 
salt  or  soda,  and  we  must  surely  be  coming  on 
to  the  trail. 

"  Effendim  ! "  It  was  the  smallest,  ugliest, 
silentest  camel-boy  that  saw  it  first.  There, 
on  the  left,  as  we  open  the  northward  part  of 
the  valley !  A  long,  low,  white  wall — not  a 
blotch  this  time,  but  a  solid  wall  with  ends 
and  top  and  corners !  We  have  arrived ;  no 
thanks  to  anything  except  the  merest  luck, 
but  we  have  arrived !  Forward,  now,  hegin, 
to  your  fodder — the  third  is  hopelessly  behind, 
lying  panting  in  the  sand ;  but  what  does 
that  matter  now?  There  is  the  tall,  brown 
baggage- camel  with  the  stores.  Inside  the 
dead  white  wall  are  many  wells. 


142 


XII. 

A   COPTIC    MONASTERY. 

A  SILENT  BUILDING  — THE  GUEST-CHAMBER  —  THE  ALLURING 
CIGARETTE — THE  POSITION  OF  THE  COPTS— BEDAWIN  ATTACKS 
— CELEBRATION   OF  MIDNIGHT   MASS. 

January  6.  —  It  stands  all  by  itself,  far 
out  in  the  desert.  North-west  of  it  runs 
a  twenty -mile  valley,  with  a  strinf,^  of  salt 
lakes,  a  village  or  two  of  semi-Bedawin,  and. 
in  these  latter  days,  a  soda  factory.  When 
first  the  brethren  of  St  Mark  came  there — 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  men  say,  after 
the  birth  of  their  Lord — there  was  nothino- 

o 

but  a  few  wild  savages  and  sand.  It  was  a 
long  day's  journey  from  anywhere ;  there 
was  not  a  blade  of  grass  within  thirty  miles 
of  it.  It  stands  all  alone  on  the  slope  of 
a  low  hill  of  sand.     As  you  approach  it  you 


THE   ENTRANCE-GATE.  143 

see  one  tree  —  stunted,  and  dry,  and  dusty, 
but  a  living  tree,  a  grateful  wonder  in  the 
desert — and  a  few  ruined  walls  of  the  many 
brother  monasteries  that  once  stood  beside  it. 
Besides  that,  not  a  dwelling,  not  a  patch  of 
cultivation,  not  a  beast.  The  face  of  the 
building  you  approach  is  a  blind,  worn,  white 
wall,  —  not  a  door,  not  a  window,  not  an 
embrasure  even.  In  the  dead  silence  of  the 
desert  the  convent  seems  as  dead  and  silent 
as  all  else. 

On  the  other  side  is  a  sort  of  blue,  wooden 
hatchment  bearing  a  cross ;  but  still  you 
wonder  how  you  can  get  in.  Only  as  you 
come  opposite  it  you  see  that  this  cross 
stands  over  the  door — a  stout,  wooden  door, 
that  the  shortest  man  must  stoop  to  go 
through,  half  underground.  The  bell  rings, 
and  presently  a  deep  voice  behind  the  door 
cries  out  something  in  Arabic.  "  Pasha 
Inglesi,"  is  the  reply.  The  door  goes  back 
with  a  creak,  and  there  is  a  small,  brown- 
bearded,  blear-eyed  man,  in  black  burnouse 
and   turban.     He   salaams,  and   puts   out   his 


144  A   COPTIC    MONASTERY. 

hand,  takes  yours,  and  bows  down  and  kisses 
it.  You  go  in,  and  find  yourself  facing  a 
dead  wall  again :  turn  to  the  left  and  go  a 
pace  or  two,  still  between  high,  dead  walls. 
Then  to  the  right — and  what  is  this? 

It  had  looked  like  a  tomb  outside  ;  now 
you  are  in  a  little  world — a  tiny  patch  of 
the  world  you  know  transported  into  the 
midst  of  the  world  of  desert.  The  high 
wall  was  the  wall,  not  of  one  building,  but 
of  a  little  colony  :  here  are  grey  -  plastered 
houses,  brown  mud  cells,  little  white-plastered 
domes,  pale-green  palms ;  here — most  blessed 
sight  of  all  —  is  a  deep,  damp  well,  and  a 
tiny  patch  of  rich  green  clover.  This  world 
was  vocal,  too ;  you  heard  the  caw  of  crows, 
the  cooing  of  pigeons,  the  cackle  of  hens, 
and  once  the  low  of  an  ox.  The  outer  wall 
— here  crumbling,  there  fast  and  square — 
rose  up  high  above  it  all,  cutting  into  the 
brilliant  blue  heaven ;  outside  it  was  death, 
inside  it  life.  The  holy  men  had  renounced 
the  world,  and  left  it ;  but  they  had  brought 
with  them  just  enough  of  it  to  live  on. 


THE   GUEST-CHAMBER.  145 

They  took  us  into  their  guest-chamber — 
without  glass  windows,  but  new,  well  built, 
large,  and  clean  :  it  was  added  a  few  months 
ago  precisely  for  the  entertainment  of 
strangers.  Mattresses  lay  in  the  corners, 
and  they  seated  us  on  chairs.  The  abbot, 
a  stout,  black  -  bearded  little  man  with  a 
twinkling  eye,  squatted  cheerfully  on  the 
floor  against  the  wall.  Then  a  lay  brother 
brought  drink — a  coarse,  brown-gowned,  un- 
shaven, dirty -fingered  lay  brother  with  the 
features  of  a  convict  and  the  grin  of  a 
schoolboy.  Sherbet  and  coffee  he  brought 
— the  sherbet  was  sickly,  but  it  was  cool 
and  wet !  —  and  we  repaid  with  cigarettes. 
The  fathers  partook  gladly  and  smoked 
furiously,  dropping  their  ashes  and  spittle 
unaffectedly  on  the  guest  -  chamber  floor. 
They  brought  us  black  bread  and  stewed 
citrons  and  treacle  and  cheese.  It  was  their 
Christmas  Eve — old  style — and  they  extended 
to  us  a  cordial  invitation  for  midnight  mass. 

It  was  the  great  ritual  day  of  all  the  year, 
and  I  could   not   help   feeling   how  much  Mr 


146  A   COPTIC   MONASTERY. 

Athelstan  Riley  would  have  enjoyed  it.  All 
day  long  the  tinkle  of  little  bells  and  the 
boom  of  biof  ones  summoned  the  monks  to 
one  ceremony  or  another.  Nevertheless,  the 
lioly  men,  allured  by  cigarettes,  kept  dropping 
in  continuously  all  the  afternoon.  We  had 
put  a  chair  against  the  door,  as  it  would 
not  shut,  but  that  was  no  bar  to  their 
curiosity.  A  measured  tread  up  the  stairs,  a 
grating  at  the  door,  and  politeness  demanded 
that  I  should  spring  up  and  open.  Then 
in  came  the  black,  turbaned  figure  with  a 
salaam,  sat  down  on  a  chair,  and  stared 
methodically  at  us.  Now  it  was  the  abbot, 
now  a  sort  of  sub -abbot,  in  a  violet  turban 
now  the  Newgate  Calendar  lay-brother,  now 
a  sack-clothed  workman  employed  about  the 
place.  My  companion  had  not  much  Arabic 
to  spare,  and  I  had  none,  except  the  word 
for  "  cab,"  which  one  can  hardly  use  much 
by  itself  in  a  desert  convent ;  so  that  con- 
versation was  not  brisk.  They  sat  and 
looked  at  us  methodically  till  they  had 
earned    the    cisrarette,    and    then,    without   a 


CENTURIES    OF    OPPRESSION".  147 

word,  went  solemnly  away.  Nearly  all  of 
them  were  blind,  or  half- blind,  or  getting 
blind,  not  so  much  from  over- study  —  one 
brother  could  nearly  read  Coptic,  but  he  re- 
presented the  whole  learning  of  the  founda- 
tion—  as  from  ophthalmia,  the  scourge  of 
Egypt.  With  the  learned  monk,  who  also 
knew  a  word  of  Italian,  we  did  indeed  hold 
a  long,  if  vague,  conversation,  and  got  so 
far  as  to  offer  him  whisky.  He  declined, 
regretfully,  on  the  ground  that  it  would 
spoil  his  voice  for  the  night's  chanting ;  but 
cheerily  added  that  he  would  come  in  for  it 
after  twelve. 

Pending  that,  we  walked  round  the  monas- 
tery, and  a  strange,  pitiful  tale  it  told, 
eloquent  of  many  centuries'  oppression.  As 
a  sect,  the  Copts,  I  suppose,  are  some  seven- 
teen hundred  years  old ;  as  a  race,  some 
nine  thousand ;  out  of  which,  what  with 
their  own  rulers  and  foreign  lords,  they 
have  dared  call  their  souls  their  own  during 
the  last  fifteen.  Their  maintainable  rights 
date  from  the   British   occupation ;   and  only 


148  A    COrTIC    MONASTERY. 

the  other  day  a  native  schoolmaster,  In  one 
of  the  chief  Europeanised   schools    of   Cairo, 
spat  in   a   Copt   boy's   face,    and    called   him 
an    infidel    dog  :    the    Copt    father    was    too 
tame   even   to  prefer  a    complaint.      So  this 
monastery    wall    was    high    and    thick,    and 
offered  no  windows  to  be  shot  through.     The 
gate  was  secured   by  a  wooden  bolt  of  the 
thickness   of  a   man's    thigh.       And    by   the 
side  of  it  lay  a  big  millstone ;  there  used  to 
bo    two,    and    their    use    was   this.      When 
raiding   Bedawin   appeared,   which    they   did 
perpetually,    the    monk    on    watch    descried 
them   from   the   parapet.       Thereon    another 
monk   below    rolled    the    millstones    between 
the   lintels   of  the    door,    which    they   fitted 
exactly.     Then  with  pulleys— they  are  there 
to    this  day  at  the  top   of  the  wall  —  they 
hauled  the  monk  up  into  their  fortress.     And 
the    Bedawin   found  it   difficult   to   burst   or 
burn    the    gate    across    the    millstones,    and 
difficult  to  pull  the  millstones  out,  for  they 
were  wedo^ed  as  in  a  vice. 

If  they  did   succeed  in   passing   the   door 


A   MONASTIC    FORTRESS.  149 

there  was  a  further  refuge  left.  I  went  up 
a  flight  of  steps  and  then  across  a  wooden 
drawbridge  into  the  great  solid  tower.  There 
are  bits  chipped  out  of  the  masonry  as  from 
glancing  shots  fired  against  one  of  the  small 
windows.  Within  this  tower  is  a  well,  a  store 
of  grain,  and  two  chaj)els  :  here  the  monks 
could  satisfy  all  their  simple  needs,  and  here, 
with  the  bridge  drawn  in,  they  could  tire 
out  the  hostility  of  all  the  Libyan  desert. 
All  over  this  queer  outpost  of  Christianity 
the  maxim  "  Watch  and  pray "  is  written 
very  literally  indeed. 

But  by  now  it  was  ten  o'clock,  and  the 
big  bell  was  clanging  for  the  great  ceremony 
of  the  year.  We  went  down  into  the  court, 
guided  by  the  hoarse  monotonous  cadence 
of  a  chant.  Through  a  low  door  we  stepped 
into  what  seemed  a  stable ;  then  turned  to 
the  right,  and  we  were  in  church.  It  was 
low  and  small,  crossed  by  wooden  beams, 
and  dimly  lighted.  On  the  flagged  floor  of 
the  outermost  precinct  lay  heaps  of  grain 
and    sacking  ;     within    an    open     woodwork 


150  A    COPTIC    MONASTERY. 

screen  stood  the  monks  ;  beyond  them, 
through  a  narrow  door,  we  could  see  darkly 
into  a  farther  round  room  with  a  table, 
about  which  moved  three  priests.  In  the 
middle  partition  was  a  carved  wooden  altar, 
curiously  like  a  sideboard  with  china  shelves 
above  it ;  over  that  hung  an  antique  picture 
with  three  gilded  saints. 

The  monks  stood,  facing  all  ways,  before 
lecterns ;  with  the  three  in  the  inner  chamber 
there  were  about  a  dozen.  One  old  man 
followed,  by  the  light  of  a  crooked  taper, 
the  lines  of  an  illuminated  prayer  -  book, 
which  he  held  an  inch  from  his  eyes ;  he 
had  his  back  to  all  the  others.  Two  more 
stood  back  to  back.  The  lay  -  brother  was 
kneeling  with  his  face  towards  the  outer 
chapel,  where  he  stood.  Another,  his  face 
muffled  in  his  shawl,  lay  in  a  heap  in  a 
corner.  Many  supported  themselves  with  a 
long  crutch  under  the  armpit.  The  whole 
place  was  fragrant  with  incense,  and  rang 
with  the  loud,  nasal,  perpetual  repetitions  of 
the  chant. 


CELEBRATION    OF    MASS.  151 

The  abbot  took  a  triangle  from  a  shelf, 
and  beat  it  in  time  with  the  music.  A 
priest  came  out  of  the  inner  room  swinging 
a  censer ;  he  passed,  swinging  before  each 
worshipper,  till  he  came  to  us ;  as  he  paused 
before  them,  each  bowed  to  his  knees.  Next 
the  abbot  and  another,  standing  nose  to  nose, 
were  intoning  a  duologue.  Then  the  lay- 
brother  took  up  a  solo  :  it  was  plain  he 
could  not  read,  and  had  not  the  faintest 
idea  what  he  was  saying ;  as  he  halted  and 
stumbled,  deep  voices  from  here  and  there 
prompted  him,  lest  any  word  of  the  ritual 
should  go  unsaid.  Now  a  brother  was  carry- 
ing forward  a  tray  of  small  bread- cakes  for 
consecration  —  the  five  wounds  of  Christ 
pictured  in  the  middle,  a  Coptic  inscription 
round  the  border.  Then  a  priest  from  the 
sanctuary  opened  a  cupboard  in  the  wall, 
and  took  out  vestments.  In  the  dimness 
the  innermost  three  could  be  discerned  rob- 
ing themselves  round  the  table.  The  chant, 
which  had  drooped,  broke  out  again,  full- 
throated,    almost    furious.       "  Kyrie    eleison  ; 


152  A   COPTIC    MONASTERY. 

kyiie  eleison  ;  kyrie  eleisoii,"  it  rang  clamor- 
ously all  round  the  dusty  little  chapel ;  it 
floated  out  over  the  black,  silent  desert. 
Then  it  hushed  suddenly.  From  the  holy- 
place  came  forth  the  priests  in  tarnished 
vestments,  but  white  and  gold  and  scarlet. 
Each  of  the  black,  muffled  figures  bowed  to 
earth  before  them,  and  greasy  lips,  in  a 
humble  ecstasy,  kissed  dirty  fingers. 


153 


XIII. 

TAMING   THE    DESERT. 

THE  SODA-WORKS  AT  WADY  NATEUN — BIR  HOOKER — A  SWISS 
SYNDICATE  —  NO  BRITISH  CAPITAL  FOR  BRITISH  EGYPT — A 
FREQUENTED   TRACK — THE   RAILWAY. 

January  8. — I  left  a  virgin  page  in  my  diary 
last  night  because  (a)  it  was  too  cold  to  hold 
a  pen  ;  (h)  I  was  teaching  the  new  Swiss  clerk 
at  the  rest-house  how  to  make  (l)  cocoa  and 
(2)  toddy ;  and  (c)  by  the  time  he  knew  toddy 
it  was  one  o'clock,  and  I  had  to  get  up  at 
half-past  five. 

I  am  back  now  from  the  four  days  in  the 
desert,  from  the  scorching  sun,  and  the  biting 
wind,  the  sand,  and  the  vastness,  and  the 
mystery,  to  find  Shepheard's  like  a  rabbit- 
warren,  and  me  consigned  to  an  upper  garret, 
without  room  to  swing  a  cockroach.     To  the 


154  TAMING    THE    DESERT. 

throng  of  fresh  sun  -  seekers  I  will  make  a 
backsheesh  of  the  Pyramids,  and  the  mosques, 
and  the  bazaars,  if  they  will  only  leave  the 
desert  free  till  I  come  to  Egypt  again. 

Yet,  if  I  ever  come  again  to  immemorial, 
ever-changing  Egypt,  I  shall  find  a  vast  differ- 
ence even  there.  British  energy  is  transform- 
ing and  civilising  even  the  desert.  Twelve 
miles  from  the  monastery  of  St  Mark  stand 
the  long,  low,  mud-and-board  quadrangles  of 
the  Wady  Natrun  soda-works.  You  approach 
it  by  a  string  of  deep  blue  undrinkable  lakes 
and  bulrush  swamps,  salt  and  soda  frothing 
up  like  snow  through  the  damp  mud — less 
monotonous,  but  almost  more  desolately  in- 
hospitable, than  the  raw  sand.  You  see  a  few 
tumble  -  down,  wooden  huts,  and  a  shaggy 
Bedawin  tent  or  two  ;  you  lick  the  salt  off 
your  lips  and  dried -up  mouth,  and  wonder 
how  their  inmates  do  not  go  mad  with  thirst. 

Then  you  come  to  the  factory,  and  there 
rises  up  before  you  an  Englishman,  who  asks 
you,  by  way  of  introduction,  to  have  a  drink. 
The  sort  of  Englishman  that  is  made  in  the 


MR   HOOKER.  155 

waste  places  of  the  earth,  late  of  the  Bechu- 
analand  Police,  burnt  brick-red,  eloquent,  not 
in  speech,  but  in  every  strong,  self-contained 
movement  of  his  body.  He  has  been  here 
alone  with  blacks  and  Bedawin  for  nine 
months,  and  will  be  another  year  with  a 
German  clerk ;  but  he  does  not  grumble  more 
than  every  Englishman  everywhere  :  he  just 
stays  at  his  post,  and  shoots,  and  rides,  and 
gives  orders.  In  the  clean  -  boarded  mess- 
room  he  set  us  down,  and  fed  us,  and  told 
us  all  about  it. 

The  place  is  called  "Bir  Hooker" — Hooker's 
cistern — on  the  maps,  and  so  it  ought  to  be. 
The  soda  enterprise  is  due  to  Mr  Hooker,  a 
scientific  expert  of  eminent  qualifications,  who 
had  to  wait  many  years  before  he  induced  the 
Egyptian  Government  to  take  it  up  and  make 
money.  It  is  true  the  Wady  has  been  worked 
since  nobody  knows  when ;  but  only  since  the 
English  came  has  it  been  worked  with  method. 
You  must  know  that  Wady  Natrun  is  soaked 
through  and  through  with  salt  and  soda ;  you 
cannot  walk  without  sliding  on  them,  crushing 


156  TAMING   THE    DESERT. 

them,  tasting  them,  breathing  them.  The 
water  of  the  lakes  soaks  through  from  the 
Nile,  thirty  miles  away,  and  takes  time  to 
do  it ;  the  lakes  begin  to  rise  three  months 
after  the  river.  The  astonishing  thing  is  that 
the  well  water  is  sweet — slightly  brackish  to 
my  taste,  but  sweet  by  the  standard  of  the 
desert  —  while  the  lake  water  is,  in  places, 
the  colour  of  Condy's  fluid,  and  a  great  deal 
more  impossible  to  drink.  Presumably,  there 
are  layers  of  impermeable  clay,  which  prevent 
the  Natrun  water  from  tainting  the  drink. 

But  never  mind  the  drink.  The  water  of 
the  lakes  soaks  up  through  the  impregnated 
ground  till  they  are  full  :  then  they  begin 
to  sink  again.  As  they  sink  they  leave  a 
thick  incrustation  of  raw  soda  behind  them, 
till  at  last  they  dry  up  and  leave  a  surface 
that  shines  in  the  perpetual  sun  like  powdery 
snow.  This  soda  is  dug  up  in  lumps  :  some 
of  it  is  sold  raw  for  £7  a-ton,  but  the  market 
for  this  is  small ;  the  rest  has  to  be  treated. 
In  the  sheds  down  by  the  lake,  half  a  mile 
from  the  station,  stands  all  the  machinery — 


THE    SODA-WORKS.  157 

great  solid  masses  of  iron  and  steel  com- 
plexity, painfully  carted  out  here  into  the 
lonely  desert.  There  is  the  engine,  neatly 
tarpaulined  to  keep  out  drifting  sand  ;  there 
is  the  crusher  which  crumbles  up  the  rough 
whitey-brown  lumps  into  powder,  and  under 
it  the  chamber  which  receives  the  crushings — 
treble  doored,  for  when  it  is  working  you  can 
hardly  stand  in  the  shed  for  pungent,  pene- 
trating dust.  Then  it  is  carried  away  by  a 
little  Decauville  tramway  to  the  big  red  iron 
vats  with  the  two  turret  -  shaped  furnace 
chimneys ;  then  melted  and  run  out  into  the 
cooling  vats.  Then  it  is  brought  back  to  the 
engine's  sphere  of  influence,  and  whirled  round 
in  centrifugal  driers.  Then  it  is  soda,  and  it 
fetches  £4  a- ton. 

All  this  whirling,  clanking  modernity,  mark 
you,  in  the  empty,  thirsty  desert,  where  a 
day  before  it  had  been  a  case  for  speculation 
how  many  of  our  men  and  beasts  would  hold 
out  till  we  got  to  food .  and  water.  The 
grudging  desert  denies  man  the  necessities 
of  life ;   but  here  was  indomitable  man  com- 


158  TAMING    THE    DESERT. 

pelling  it  to  give  him  luxuries  out  of  its 
very  body.  It  was  good  to  think  this  mar- 
vel had  been  wrought  by  Englishmen.  Only 
— alas ! — the  engine  and  the  furnace  and  the 
coolers  are  not  running  now,  and  when  next 
they  start  they  will  run  for  Swiss. 

It  is  all  the  fault  of  the  dragging  poverty 
of  the  Egyptian  Government,  bound  hand 
and  foot  by  Europe,  not  able  to  spend  its 
own  money  for  its  own  good.  The  enter- 
prise brought  the  Government  a  revenue,  but 
it  could  not  afford  the  money  to  exploit  the 
soda  thoroughly.  For  that  a  railway  was 
wanted,  more  plant,  more  buildings  —  in  a 
word,  more  money.  So  the  concern  has  been 
made  over  to  a  Swiss  syndicate  for  fifty  years. 
They  are  building  a  railway,  and  quarrying 
stone  for  buildings,  and  preparing  to  double, 
and  treble,  and  quadruple  the  machinery,  and 
make  it  pay — and  fill  it  with  Swiss.  The  old 
story,  you  see :  no  British  capital  for  British 
Egypt ! 

However,  it's  no  use  crying.  They  can 
have    the    soda,    and    we    will    try    a    little 


A   DESERT    ROAD.  159 

whisky  and  dinner  and  a  yarn.  Next  morn- 
ing the  glorious  sun  is  gilding  the  lakes  and 
the  huts  and  the  little  bit  of  garden  where 
the  ox  is  turning  up  water  for  the  sun- 
flowers and  English  vegetables,  and  clover 
for  the  beasts.  Buy  what  we  want  for  the 
day  at  the  shop — for  there  Is  even  a  store, 
so  permanent  is  the  invasion  of  civilisation 
— and  then  on  with  our  traps  to  the  bullock- 
cart,  and  away.  A  long  two  miles'  pull  up 
a  loose  rise  is  a  hard  beginning  for  the  oxen, 
since  the  cart  is  a  heavy  lorry,  with  tyres 
nearly  a  foot  wide  to  keep  on  the  surface 
of  the  sand.  Then  we  are  over  the  brow : 
the  friendly  green  and  mud  -  colour  of  BIr 
Hooker  sinks  behind  us,  and  we  are  in  the 
desert  again. 

But  once  more  a  very  different  desert  from 
that  we  first  knew.  We  are  now  on  a  broad 
track  marked  by  wheels  and  ox-hoofs,  horse 
and  mule  and  donkey  and  camel  tracks,  and 
the  prints  of  booted  as  well  as  naked  feet. 
We  are  in  a  Begent  Street  of  the  desert. 
Presently  we   pass   by  a  little   white   tower 


IGO  TAMING    THE    DESERT. 

with  a  sign-post  :  It  tells  how  far  we  have 
come,  and  how  far  is  yet  to  go.  This  is 
fatherly  care,  indeed.  We  meet  men  every 
hour  —  one  walking  behind  a  camel  and  a 
mule  with  an  axe  over  his  shoulder,  doubt- 
less going  to  work  at  Bir  Hooker ;  one 
driving  a  mule-cart ;  one  walking  all  alone ; 
a  couple  of  coastguards  with  half-a-dozen 
camels.  The  Libyan  desert  seems  a  funny 
place  to  meet  a  coastguard  ;  but  it  Is  the 
western  shore  of  Egypt,  as  the  Mediterranean 
is  the  northern,  and  smugglers  run  forbidden 
hasheesh  from  Tripoli. 

Over  ridges  and  ridges  the  bullock  -  cart 
rumbles  and  crawls,  till  about  two,  when  the 
sun  is  very  hot  and  drowsy,  there  appears  a 
little  brown  match-board  on  the  farthest  hor- 
izon. It  is  still  an  hour  and  a  half  away  ;  but 
when  we  get  to  it  we  find  a  rest-house,  an 
outpost  of  civilising  Bir  Hooker  —  a  couple 
of  real  beds,  a  table,  a  couple  of  chairs — in 
brief,  rooms,  fire,  light,  and  attendance.  Four 
hours'  rest  is  due  to  the  bullocks,  and  a 
little  rest  is  due  to  us ;    then,   in  the  broad 


THE  YOKE  OF  THE  DESERT.       161 

moonlight,  we  must  be  off  again.  With  each 
hour  fresh  invaders  of  civilisation  appear. 
Here  are  the  white,  long-shadowed  tents  of 
railway  surveyors.  Now  we  are  not  an  hour 
from  Bir  Hooker's  second  rest-house,  which 
shakes  hands  with  the  railway  to  Cairo. 
And  now  the  southward  horizon  seems  sud- 
denly to  have  become  even  and  hard  —  a 
long,  straight  bar  of  shadow  keeping  pace 
with  us.  It  is  surely  too  regular,  too  un- 
swerving, too  set  with  purpose  for  the 
desert ;  it  can  only  be  the  embankment  of 
the  coming  railway.  That  black,  dead- 
straight,  dead-level  line  is  the  yoke  for  the 
neck  of  the  desert.  The  tameless  desert  is 
tamed ;  from  henceforth  it  must  bow  itself 
to  bear  burdens. 


1G2 


XIV. 

THE    SUDAN    AND    THE    FELLAH. 

PREPARATIONS  FOR  WAR  —  THE  VALUE  OF  THE  SUDAN — THK 
POSSIBILITIES  OF  THE  UPPER  NILE  —  SUGAR  -  FACTORIES — 
PROSPERITY  OP  THE  FELLAH — HIS  INCORRIGIBLE  IMPROVI- 
DENCE. 

January  9. — War !  When  I  left  Cairo  for 
the  desert  the  place  was  full  of  rumours  of  it 
— had  been  for  three  weeks.  When  I  got 
back  it  was  full  of  facts.  The  Lincolns  gone, 
the  Warwicks  going  through  from  Alexandria 
to-day,  the  Camerons  to  be  off  as  soon  as  they 
can  be  relieved.  It's  special  train  for  Atkins 
to-day,  and  you  can  see  it  in  every  street. 
The  gunners  from  the  Citadel  walk  the  streets 
with  the  air  of  men  whose  merits  are  recognised 
at  last,  and  the  Cameron  Highlanders  hail  their 
midnight  donkeys  for  Kasr-el-Nil  barracks  in 


A    DANGEROUS    DELAY.  163 

a  more  richly  patriotic  Cameron-Highland  than 
ever ;  at  its  best  it  is  a  great  deal  harder  to 
understand  than  Arabic.  Everybody  rejoices 
except  war  correspondents,  who  are  not  in- 
vited. Now  the  British  regiments  are  going 
up  they  can  hardly  come  back  without  finish- 
ing the  tedious  job  at  last,  and  before  1899 
the  Khalifa  will  have  been  smashed  at  Omdur- 
man,  and  Egypt,  after  half  a  generation  of 
frontier  war,  will  be  at  rest. 

Whose  fault  it  was  that  last  year's  advance 
stopped  short  at  the  Atbara,  not  knowing,  I 
would  rather  not  say.  Perhaps  Mr  Glad- 
stone's. But  the  effect  of  it  was  that  Egypt 
was  left  militarily  in  the  most  exposed  posi- 
tion imaginable.  Its  outposts  are  over  thir- 
teen hundred  miles  by  the  directest  line  of 
communication  from  its  ultimate  base,  which  is 
the  Mediterranean.  The  Nile  is  falling  below 
the  possibilities  of  navigation,  and  the  rail- 
head, at  this  moment,  is  some  twenty-five 
miles  beyond  Abu  Hamed,  and  still  about  four 
times  that  distance  short  of  Berber.  The 
whole  line  of  the  Nile   from  Dongola  to  Abu 


164  THE   SUDAN    AND   THE   FELLAH. 

Hamed  is  open  to  attacks  across  the  desert 
from  Metemmeh  and  Omdurman.  ' 

Whether  the  reports  of  an  intended  dervish 
attack  be  well  founded  or  not,  it  is  fairly  plain 
that  the  Egyptian  Army,  whose  fighting  power 
is  still  to  some  extent  indeterminate,  ought 
not  to  be  left  unsupported  in  such  a  position. 
Only  unluckily  this  is  almost  the  worst  season 
of  the  year  to  support  it.  No  river  and  no 
rail — and  all  the  needful  camels  would  run 
into  money,  and  though  the  Egyptian  Govern- 
ment hopes  for  a  grant  in  aid,  Sudan  cam- 
paigns have  to  be  done  on  the  cheap.  So  that 
it  seems  likely  that  the  advance  will  go  slow 
for  the  present,  creeping  forward  with  the 
railway,  and  waiting  till  it  is  met  by  the 
rising  Nile.  But  quick  or  slow,  it  ought  to 
be  finished  this  year,  that  Egypt  may  have 
rest. 

January  10. — I  have  been  making  some 
inquiries  about  the  probable  effect  of  the  re- 
conquest  on  the  prosperity  of  Egypt.  The 
sum  of  them  is,  roughly,  that  for  many  years 
to  come  Egypt  would  be  better  off,  materially, 


THE  VALUE  OY    THE  SUDAN.      165 

without  it.  I  had  beheved  the  Egyptian 
Sudan  a  land  sticky  with  gum  and  india- 
rubber,  and  so  perhaps  it  is.  But,  to  begin 
with,  there  is  one  thing  it  lacks — and  that  is 
Sudanese.  From  Wady  Haifa  to  Khartoum 
the  Nile  banks  have  be*?73  depopulated.  Raid- 
ing dervishes  cut  the  men  and  women  into 
pieces,  and  throw  the  children  into  the  Nile. 
Tribes  which  refuse  the  authority  of  Khalifa 
Abdullahi  are  exterminated  out  of  hand.  It 
will  probably  be  a  couple  of  generations  before 
these  provinces  can  recover  enough  to  be  a 
financial  strength  to  Egypt.  In  the  meantime 
they  may  pay  for  a  very  simple  rough-and- 
ready  administration ;  but  that  will  be  about 
all.  Nothing  certainly  towards  the  cost  of 
their  recovery.  The  truth  is  that,  though 
some  of  the  Sudan  provinces  used  to  pay  their 
way,  the  Sudan  as  a  whole  was  never  a 
pecuniary  advantage  to  Egypt.  In  the  old 
days  it  used  to  export  few  commodities  — 
ivory,  slaves,  gum,  and  a  certain  brand  of 
dates  much  prized  in  Constantinople.  Ivory 
is  all  but  exhausted  now,  and  in  any  case  the 


166  THE    SUDAN    AND    THE    FELLAH. 

hunting  and  transport  of  it  rested  on  slave- 
labour  :  slaves,  of  course,  are  legal  merchan- 
dise in  Egypt  no  more.  The  dates  went 
straight  out  of  the  country  unhandled ;  the 
gum  employed  some  two  hundred  people  to 
sort  it  into  sizes.  The  waofe-bill  of  these  two 
hundred  is  about  the  only  direct  financial  re- 
turn that  Egypt  may  expect  for  the  money 
she  is  squeezing  out  and  bonding  and  pour- 

ino^  into  the  Sudan.  1 

...  ' 

Political  economists  tell  us  that  exports  buy 

imports — in  other  words,  that  you  cannot  buy 
things  without  money,  and  you  cannot  get 
money  without  money's  worth.  That  being 
so,  the  prospects  of  an  immediately  lucrative 
British  trade  with  the  Sudan  are  none  too 
sunny.  Manchester  does  not  give  away 
cotton -cloth  for  nothing;  gum  and  india- 
rubber  need  men  to  get  them,  and  the  mar- 
ket for  ostrich  feathers  is  not  limitless.  Still, 
there  are  compensations.  On  the  depopulated 
Nile  banks,  and  on  the  large  islands  in  mid- 
stream, have  grown  up  dense  forests.  Egypt 
is  practically  a  treeless  country,  but  for  palms 


THE   PROSPECTS    OF    THE    UPPER    NILE.      167 

and  acacias  :  what  timber  there  is,  is  pretty 
well  used  up  for  water-wheels.  What  is 
wanted  for  doors  and  windows  —  the  Arab 
does  not  use  glass — and  for  railway-sleepers 
comes  in  mostly  from  Syria.  The  afforesta- 
tion of  the  Nile  banks,  if  the  trees  are  properly 
husbanded,  would  supply  a  great  part  of  this 
demand  from  Egypt,  and  it  is  possible  that 
the  heavily  -  burdened  Sir  William  Garstin 
may  soon  find  himself  charged  with  a  De- 
partment of  Forestry,  in  addition  to  his  other 
diversions.  Another  good  point  is  the  growth 
of  india-rubber.  The  rubber  forests  of  the 
Congo  State  and  South  America,  vast  as  they 
are,  must  give  out  in  time,  under  the  present 
practice  of  felling  the  trees  instead  of  tapping 
them.  Here,  again,  under  proper  husbandry, 
will  be  a  chance  for  the  Upper  Nile. 

Passing  down  to  Upper  Egypt  —  that  is, 
the  Nile-strip  between  Assouan  and  the  Delta 
— its  possibilities  in  respect  of  sugar-growing 
are  prodigious.  Two  of  the  largest  factories 
in  the  world  are  already  equipped  here.  I 
met   a   gentleman   to  -  day    who    lately   took 


168  THE    SUDAN    AND    THE    FELLAH. 

shares  in  a  company  for  irrigating  sugar  land 
and  crushing  the  canes  on  commission  for  the 
native  growers ;  after  one  year's  work  the 
shares  have  risen  from  £20  to  £26.  In 
1896-97  the  value  of  Egypt's  sugar  export 
went  up  from  £485,080  to  £784,792.  If  only 
the  reservoir  at  Assouan  came  into  being,  the 
land  on  which  sugar  could  be  grown  might 
probably  be  increased  fivefold.  Only,  when 
you  hear  of  sugar  being  grown,  you  must  not 
assume  too  readily  that  it  is  being  grown  to 
pay  under  commercial  conditions.  The  big- 
gest paying  sugar-workings  are  stale  affairs, 
belonging  to  the  Daira  Sainieh  estates.  So 
that  they  do  not  have  to  pay  rent  for  their 
land,  which,  in  a  country  where  rents  are  so 
high  as  they  are  here,  makes  a  huge  difference 
in  their  balance-sheets.  For  the  rest,  the 
ruinously  low  price  of  sugar,  here  as  else- 
where, is  a  tremendous  handicap  on  the 
young  industry.  When  we  give  preferential 
treatment  to  the  West  Indies,  we  might 
wisely  give  it  to  Egypt  also. 


PROSPERITY    OF    THE    FELLAH.  10 'J 

Still,  even  as  things  now  stand,  the  agri- 
cultural prosperity  of  Egypt  is  high.  Even 
with  the  bad  cotton  prices  the  increased  area 
of  cultivation  keeps  Egypt's  income  steady  on 
this  account.  Prices  may  go  down  as  much 
as' 50  per  cent,  but  if  the  cotton-bearing  land 
has  been  increased  by  100  per  cent,  Egypt  is 
still  the  gainer. 

So  that,  despite  the  Sudan  campaign  and 
the  general  tightness,  the  fellah  ought  to  be 
prospering.  So  he  is ;  but  not  as  much  as  he 
should.  The  fellah  is  still  in  debt ;  he  always 
has  been  in  debt,  and  until  he  changes  his 
nature  he  always  will  be.  His  taxes  are 
high,  certainly.  I  remember  my  Arabic 
editor  told  me  the  land  tax  ran  in  places  to 
40  per  cent.  On  the  average  the  land  tax  of 
Egypt,  which  brings  in  half  the  revenue,  works 
out  at  £1  per  feddan,  which  is  about  an  acre. 
As  land  lets  easily  at  £5  and  £6  a  feddan, 
this  is  only  20  per  cent  or  less — a  heavy  tax, 
assuredly  :  only  a  landlord  who  can  pay  £1 
an  acre  taxes  and  receive  £4  or  £5   balance 


170  THE    SUDAN    AND    TUE    FELLAH. 

of  rent  would  hardly  chans^e  places  with  some 
I  know  in  England.  It  is  admitted,  however, 
by  the  Ministry  of  Finance  that  this  tax  is 
very  arbitrarily  imposed — which,  they  say,  is 
a  thing  which  must  be  taken  in  hand.  The 
sooner,  I  should  say,  the  better. 

But  taxes  may  be  relaxed  or  remitted,  as 
the  Government  will ;  the  fellah  remains  in 
debt.  It  is  his  nature.  The  Greek,  or  Jew- 
ish, or  Armenian  usurer  lives  in  his  village ; 
at  seed-time  the  fellah  goes  to  him,  and 
borrows  a  little  money  for  seeds,  at  20  or  30, 
or  even  50  per  cent.  Then  he  borrows  a  little 
more  for  a  new  spade,  and  a  little  more  to  buy 
a  donkey.  The  security  is  the  crop.  If  there 
is  a  satisfactory  Nile  and  a  good  harvest,  the 
fellah  is  in  a  position  to  pay  the  usurer  off, 
which  he  does — all  but  a  little  :  he  would 
not  feel  comfortable  if  he  were  quite  free  of 
debt.  Perhaps  it  has  been  a  really  good  year ; 
then  he  buys  wood  to  make  doors  and  win- 
dows for  his  honse,  he  buys  a  cheap  French 
bedstead  instead  of  his  mud-bank,  and  smokes 


THE    VILLAGE    USURER.  l7l 

more  cigarettes  than  before.  These  are  his 
luxuries ;  and  the  Customs  returns  in  these 
articles  of  import  show  a  steady  rise  in  the 
fellah's  standard  of  comfort.  Even  then,  per- 
haps, he  still  has  a  fair  sum  in  hand ;  but  does 
he  lay  it  by  against  next  seed-time  ?  Not  he  ! 
He  marries  a  new  wife,  and  gives  what  he 
calls  a  "fantasia" — a  great  feast  to  all  his 
friends  and  neighbours,  with  music  and  danc- 
ing, and  joyously  blues  it  all.  Next  seed-time 
it  suddenly  occurs  to  him  that  he  wants 
seed ;  he  goes  back  to  the  usurer  and  borrows 
for  it  at  20,  and  30,  and  50, 

Then  why  not  give  the  fellah  a  decent 
bank,  you  ask?  It  is  easy  to  ask,  but  not 
so  easy  to  do.  The  usurer  lives  in  the 
village,  and  knows  the  circumstances,  abili- 
ties, characters,  of  every  one  of  his  clients. 
He  knows  exactly ;  he  lives  by  knowing. 
Could  the  Government  put  such  an  agent 
into  every  village  to  do  the  same?  The 
complexity,  and  the  expense,  and  the  mul- 
tiplication of  small  officials  would  be  endless. 


172  THE    SUDAN    AND    THE   FELLAH. 

Or  suppose  private  banking  firms  were  found . 
to  go  into  the  business  :  they  would  hardly 
do  so  without  getting  an  assurance  from  the 
Government  that  their  debts  should  rank 
first  for  recovery  after  taxes,  and  the  Gov- 
ernment would  be  placed  in  the  position  of 
collecting  for  the  money-lender  —  a  horrible 
thing  to  contemplate. 

It  is  possible  that  private  enterprise  may 
some  day  do  something  to  fill  its  own  pockets, 
while  helping  to  save  the  fellah  from  his  own 
improvidence.  In  the  meantime,  the  Egyp- 
tian Treasury  has  done  one  piece  of  good 
work  by  going  into  the  usury  business  in 
competition  with  the  usurers.  Into  one  dis- 
trict, where  the  Greeks  and  Armenians  were 
peculiarly  extortionate,  it  sent  an  official  with 
£10,000  in  cash,  and  lent  it  to  the  fellahin  at 
6  per  cent.  They  borrowed  gladly  and  repaid 
punctually,  but  that  was  not  all.  The  money- 
lenders, not  of  that  district  only  but  for  many 
miles  around,  took  fright.  If  the  Government 
is  to  bring  round  pounds  at  6  per  cent,  reas- 


WIVES    AND    FANTASIAS. 


173 


oned  they,  our  occupation's  gone.     Down  went 
the  rate  of  interest  all  round. 

But  the  fellah  continues  to  borrow  from 
them  when  he  is  short ;  and  when  he  is 
flush  he  marries  more  wives  and  givts 
fantasias. 




■i 

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^rab  women  and  children. 


174 


ALEXANDRIA. 

A  BUSINESS  TOWN — THE  WHARVES — THE  ONION  MARKET — QUEEH 
CITY  OF  THE  LEVANT  —  STATISTICS  OF  COMMERCE  —  ARAB 
LABOUR  AT  THE  DOCKS  —  NECESSITY  FOR  AN  EXTENDED 
HARBOUR. 

January  11. — Dang,  deng,  ding,  dong ;  deno-, 
dang,  dong,  ding;  boom,  boom,  boom,  boom, 
boom,  boom.  Where  on  earth  was  I  ?  I 
thought  for  a  moment  I  must  be  home  in 
Russell  Square  :  it  was  just  the  tone  of  the 
chimes ;  but  I  do  not  keep  myself  inside 
mosquito  -  curtains  in  Eussell  Square.  Of 
course,  yes ;  I  was  in  Alexandria. '  And  it 
was  not  at  all  unnatural,  really,  to  hear  Chris- 
tian chimes  in  Alexandria,  nor  yet  to  hear 
any  sound,  or  voice,  or  language  that  the  earth 
knows.     In  Alexandria  nothing  is  foreign. 


NOT   AN    ORIENTAL   TOWN.  l75 

Alexandria,  in  brief,  is  a  business  town,  and 
everything  and  everybody  that  can  bring  busi- 
ness or  do  business  is  in  place  there.  And 
because  it  has  its  business  to  do,  and  does  it, 
I  own  freely  that  I  like  the  look  of  it  better 
than  the  look  of  Cairo.  How  I  shall  like  it 
to-morrow  and  the  next  day,  and  how  I  should 
like  a  month  of  it,  having  no  particular  busi- 
ness to  do,  is  another  matter ;  they  say  that 
to  the  stranger  Alexandria  can  be  dull.  But, 
at  any  rate,  it  is  not  so  obviously  got-up  for 
show  as  Cairo  :  it  has  no  sights,  no  guides,  no 
bogus  Bedawin  ;  and  its  supply  of  donkey- 
boys  is  roughly  proportionate  to  the  demand. 
Not  that  Alexandria  is  all  wharves  and  ware- 
houses—  by  no  means.  It  has  one  square 
which,  for  space  and  scope  and  order,  is  far 
superior  to  anything  I  saw  in  Cairo — a  great 
oblong,  acacias  and  palms  in  the  middle,  the 
Bourse  at  one  end,  law  courts,  banks.  Cook's 
agency — in  Egypt  it  is  a  kind  of  Government 
office  without  red  tape — a  theatre,  the  English 
church,  and  a  statue  of  Mehemet  Ali.  It  is 
not  oriental — it  doesn't  affect  to  be ;    but  it 


176  ALEXANDRIA. 

looks  far  more  like  a  capital  than  anything  in 
Cairo. 

The  normal  street  of  Alexandria  is  less  im- 
posing. It  is  paved  with  broad  square  flag- 
stones laid  lozenge  wise :  the  commercial  com- 
munity laid  them  down  by  a  self-imposed  tax 
on  each  bale  of  cotton,  and  then  handed  them 
over  to  the  municipality  with  a  balance.  Along 
the  flags,  as  a  rule,  runs  an  electric  tramway 
or  a  row  of  staples  ready  for  one.  The  street 
is  narrow ;  the  houses,  with  their  embroidery 
of  iron  balcony  and  green  shutter,  are  narrow- 
fronted  and  high,  so  that  the  vista  down  the 
thoroughfare  is  always  a  short  one.  The 
shops  are  low  and  cramped,  but  there  are 
storeys  of  flats  above,  and  rents,  if  nothint>- 
else,  are  high.  And  all  down  its  length,  in 
the  full-bodied  sunshine,  the  street  is  gilt  with 
the  names  of  the  Italian  and  Greek  retailers. 
Every  shop,  of  course,  with  its  own  name, 
and  often  without  its  keeper's  :  not  prosy  "J. 
Smith,  Chemist,"  but  "PharmacieHippocrate," 
"Cornucopia,  Grocery,"  "Ceres  Corn -chand- 
lery," "  Heliance  Ironmongery."     Whether  it 


A   CROWDED    PORT.  l77 

is  that  the  Levantine  tradesman  dishkes  his 
name  to  be  made  too  pubhc,  or  that  the 
Levantine  mind  generally  puts  all  its  endow- 
ment of  poetry  into  business,  I  know  not ;  but 
every  little  shop  has  its  sign,  as  if  they  were 
all  so  many  taverns. 

(■  This  is  only  the  rank  and  file  of  Alexandria's 
business  ;  to  see  its  dignity  you  must  go  down 
to  the  port.  Here  are  wharves  and  wharves 
standing  high,  with  the  brown,  tight-pressed, 
hoop-bound  bales  that  stand  for  cotton.  Hera 
are  the  ships  of  all  nations  —  tall  British, 
French,  Austrian^  Italian,  Norwegian  steamers 
moored  to  the  quays  ;  a  feathery  cluster  of 
spars  and  tackle  lying  out  in  the  harbour, 
with  the  red  and  the  crescent  of  Turkey,  the 
blue  and  the  cross  of  Greece ;  beyond  them, 
yet  again,  the  black  hulls  and  pea-soup-colour 
upper- works  of  British  and  Russian  warships. 
The  assembly  of  merchantmen  tells  its  own 
tale  ;  but  if  you  want  more,  come  to  the  Onion 
Market  and  see  the  merchants.  It  is  one  of 
the  subsidiary  blessings  of  British  rule,  by  the 
way,  that,  whereas  onions  used  to  be  a  rare 

M 


178  ALEXANDRIA. 

imported  delicacy  in  Egypt,  they  are  now- 
exported  to  the  tune  of  something  hke 
£150,000  a  -  year.  But  what  was  once 
the  onion  market  is  now  the  Rialto  of 
Alexandria. 

It  is  nearly  the  hour  of  lunch  —  which 
takes  three  hours,  of  course,  according  to 
the  religious  custom  of  the  Levant ;  you 
can  tell  the  time  by  the  long  file  of  rackety 
victorias  drawn  up  outside.  But  the  inside 
is  still  all  bustle  and  buzz.  It  is  an  oblong 
court,  open  to  the  blue,  with  an  arcade 
round  it,  and  ojSices  round  the  arcade. 
These  offices  are  furnished  with  stools,  and 
tables,  and  pigeon-holes,  and  especially  with 
samples  of  cotton.  Arab  porters  are  carry- 
ing samples  of  cotton  from  every  corner  to 
every  other  corner.  And  in  every  corner, 
and  all  the  sides  of  the  arcade,  and  all  the 
middle,  are  the  merchants.  Now  you  see 
what  a  cosmopolis  is  Alexandria.  The 
English  you  can  tell  —  it  is  not  national 
vanity  —  by  their  clean,  fresh  faces,  and 
clean,      upstanding      figures  ;      the     Italians 


QUEEN    CITY    OF    THE    LEVANT.  l79 

mostly  use  square  bowlers  and  grey  double- 
breasted  jackets  ;  the  French  are  usually 
adorned  with  the  Legion  of  Honour ;  the 
Germans  —  well,  they  look  like  Germans, 
and  say  what  we  will  about  them,  we  have 
to  respect  them.  But  that  is  not  half  of 
the  show.  Gabbling  Greeks,  flashy  -  eyed 
Jews,  Turks,  and  outright  Arabs,  in  blue 
gowns,  and  red  tarbushes,  and  rainbow  tur- 
bans, Copts,  and  Syrians,  and  Armenians, 
and  dwellers  out  of  Mesopotamia,  all  bab- 
bling and  Babelling  in  their  own  and  every- 
body else's  mother  -  tongue,  buying  cotton, 
selling  grain,  swapping  sugar  for  coal,  buy- 
ing, and  selling,  and  bartering  the  wealth 
of  Egypt.  Cairo  may  sneer  at  Alexandria 
if  it  will ;  but  certainly  Alexandria  is  a 
town.  It  is  a  centre,  an  influence,  some- 
thing that  makes  and  unmakes  millions. 
If  it  were  American  they  would  call  it  the 
Queen  City  of  the  Levant. 

January  12.  —  I  have  got  some  figures 
about  it.  I  don't  know  whether  they  will 
convey  more    to    you   than    they  do  to  me ; 


180  ALEXANDRIA. 

but  they  say  you  can  prove  anything  by 
statistics,  and  I  propose  to  prove  the  im- 
portance of  Alexandria,  and  especially  the 
magnificence  of  Great  Britain.  They  are 
the  1896  figures  taken  from  the  annual 
table  compiled  by  Messrs  R.  J.  Moss  &  Co.  ; 
that  for   1897  is  naturally  not  ready  yet. 

The  net  register  tonnage  of  merchant  steam- 
ers cleared  from  Alexandria  was  938,689  tons  ; 
of  that  799,540  was  British.  Of  cotton, 
658,085  bales  went  out  of  Egypt — all  from 
Alexandria,  and  371,835  of  them  to  the 
United  Kingdom  —  besides  364,027  tons  of 
cotton -seed.  Of  coal,  643,190  tons  came  to 
Alexandria  and  966,663  to  Port  Said.  In 
1882  Alexandria  took  only  266,178  tons  and 
Port  Said  456,400  :  if  that  is  not  quite  a 
fair  comparison,  because  of  the  troubles  that 
year,  1884  showed  360,099  and  726,000  re- 
spectively. All  this  coal  is  from  Britain,  of 
course.  The  whole  Customs'  valuation  of  the 
year's  exports  tot  up  to  13,232,000  Egyptian 
pounds — an  Egyptian  pound  is  £1,  Os.  G^d. 
sterling  — and  of  that  £E6,973,000  went   to 


RIVALRY  OF  FORT  SAID.        181 

Britain.     The  Imports  were  £E9, 829,000— of 
that  £E3,056,000  from  Britain. 

We  might  Improve  on  this  last  figure ; 
but  still  we  may  be  pretty  well  satisfied 
with  the  record.  And  so  may  Alexandria. 
It  happened  that  a  long- forgotten  article  by 
me  on  Port  Said  came  into  the  club  to-day, 
and  the  leading  British  merchant  did  me 
the  embarrassing  honour  of  reading  it  at 
my  elbow.  When  he  saw  what  I  said 
about  Port  Said's  claim  that  it  ought  to  be 
the  port  of  Egypt,  he  smiled.  He  was  quite 
ready,  of  course,  being  an  English  merchant 
and  a  man  of  unquenched  enterprise,  to  move 
himself  and  his  family,  and  his  dogs,  and  his 
business  to  Port  Said,  if  necessary  ;  but  he 
does  not  expect  to  have  to  do  it.  Alexandria, 
he  explained,  is  bound  to  keep  ahead  of  Port 
Said  —  partly  because  the  Government  has 
sunk  so  much  money  in  its  harbour  and 
public  buildings,  partly  because  there  is  no 
land  anywhere  near  Port  Said  on  which  it 
can  grow  its  daily  beef  and  potatoes.  So 
Alexandria  is  quite  confident  of  Its  future. 


182  ALEXANDRIA. 

Add  to  this  that  it  is  the  cheapest  port 
in  the  world.  The  loading  of  shi2)s  is  all 
done  by  hand,  or,  rather,  by  head-and-basket, 
like  the  coaling  at  Port  Said.  A  good,  but 
not  an  unheard  of,  performance  by  this 
method  was  lately  1600  tons  of  cotton-seed 
in  eight  hours  —  and  you  wonder  why  we 
barbarians  use  such  clumsy,  antiquated  de- 
vices as  cranes  and  donkey-engines  when  it 
is  always  possible  to  hire  the  human  head. 
The  head  is  cheap,  too ;  you  can  load  cotton- 
seed at  2^d.  a- ton,  coal  at  3d.  a- ton,  bale 
cotton  at  4d.  a -ton.  No  docker's  tanner  in 
Alexandria — and  yet  the  Arab  docker  grins, 
and  pockets  his  piastre,  and  works  eleven 
hours  and  overtime,  and  g-rins  aofain.  The 
human  head  needs  Arab  shoulders  under- 
neath it,  and  an  Arab  stomach  underneath 
that. 

To  wind  up,  Alexandria  has  only  one 
grievance,  and  you  will  allow  that  it  is  a 
healthy  one.  Its  port  is  far  too  small  for 
it.  The  port  is,  roughly,  of  the  shape  of  a 
pear — not  a  William,  but  one  of  the  blunter 


AN    URGENT    NEED.  183 

cooking  sort.  The  south  side  of  this  is  the 
foreshore ;  the  north  Is  formed  by  the  elbow 
of  Ras-el-Tin  promontory,  and  a  long,  very 
obtuse -angled  mole;  the  entrance  Is  at  the 
west,  by  the  stalk  of  the  pear,  where  what 
they  call  the  coal -mole  runs  northward  to- 
wards the  obtuse -angled  mole,  which  latter 
greatly  overlaps  it.  The  fault  Is  that  all 
the  northern  part  of  the  harbour,  under  the 
obtuse  angle,  Is  too  shoal  to  be  of  much  use, 
while  there  Is  eight  and  nine  fathoms  water 
outside  the  port  west  of  the  coal  -  mole. 
What  Alexandria  wants  Is  a  new  mole, 
roughly  opposite  the  end  of  the  northern 
mole,  to  take  In  two  hundred  acres  of  this 
space,  adding  It  to  the  harbour,  which  would 
then  be  more  of  the  shape  of  a  William,  and 
less  of  a  cooking  pear.  Then  new  jetties 
could  be  built  from  the  present  coal  -  mole, 
and  there  would  be  new  berths  for  at  least 
a  dozen  ships. 

Alexandria,  so  far  as  I  could  take  Its 
opinion,  does  not  suggest  where  the  money 
is  to  come  from.     But  It  pays  stiff  Customs 


184  ALEXANDRIA. 

and  stiff  port  dues,  and  it  has  a  ri^ht  to 
say  what  it  wants.  And,  for  my  part, 
having  conceived  in  two  days  a  great  re- 
spect for  Alexandria's  enterprise  and  indus- 
try, I  hope  that  when  the  Sudan  is  recon- 
quered, and  the  reservoir  is  made,  and  the 
Caisse  de  la  Dette  and  the  mixed  tribunals 
abolished,  and  the  taxes  reduced  —  I  hope 
that  Alexandria  will  get  it. 


185 


XVI, 

LORD    CROMER   AND    HIS    WORK. 

VELVET  AND  STEEL — A  MAN  WHO  KNOWS  HIS  OWN  MIND — A 
DIPLOMATIC  TRIUMPH — WHEN  IS  ENGLAND  GOING  TO  LEAVE 
EGYPT  1 — THE  ATTITUDE  OF  FRANCE — THE  FRENCH  ABROAD 
— NATIVE  VIEWS  OP  THE  ENGLISH  OCCUPATION — A  FRENCH 
editor's  OPINION  —  OUR  ONE  FAILURE  —  ENGLAND  OB 
TURKEY. 

January  13. — To  read  Egyptian-French  ac- 
counts of  Lord  Cromer,  you  would  picture  him 
a  stiff-browed,  hard-mouthed,  cynical,  taciturn 
martinet.  To  look  at  the  real  man,  you  would 
say  that  he  gave  half  his  time  to  sleep,  and 
the  other  half  to  laughing.  Lolling  in  his 
carriage  through  the  streets  of  Cairo,  or 
lighting  a  fresh  cigarette  in  his  office,  dressed 
in  a  loose-fitting  grey  tweed  and  a  striped 
shirt,  with  ruddy  face,  short  white  hair,  and 
short    white    moustache,    with   gold  -  rimmed 


186  LORD    CROMER   AND    HIS    WORK. 

eye-glasses  half-hiding  eyes  half-closed,  mel- 
low of  voice,  and  fluent  of  speech, — is  this  the 
])erfidious  Baring,  you  ask  yourself,  whom 
Frenchmen  detest  and  strive  to  imitate  ?  this 
the  terrible  Lord  Cromer  whom  Khedives 
obey  and  tremble  ?  His  demeanour  is  genial 
and  courteous.  His  talk  is  easy,  open, 
shrewd,  humorous.  His  subordinates  ad- 
mire, respect,  even  love  him.  He  is  the 
mildest  -  mannered  man  that  ever  sacked 
Prime  Minister.  Only  somehow  you  still 
feel  the  steel  stiffening  the  velvet.  He  is 
genial,  but  he  would  be  a  bold  man  who 
would  take  a  liberty  with  him :  he  talks, 
only  not  for  publication  ;  he  is  loved,  yet  he 
must  also  be  obeyed.  Velvet  as  long  as  he 
can,  steel  as  soon  as  he  must — that  is  Lord 
Cromer. 

He  has  had  the  hardest  row  to  hoe  of  any 
British  representative  abroad  in  our  gener- 
ation, and  out  of  it  he  has  raised  the  best 
crop.  Few  men  have  ever  had  to  face  so 
much  opposition  :  few  have  so  triumphantly 
parried    and    quelled    it.     He    has    stood    for 


THE    RESULT    OF    RESOLUTION.  1 8  / 

years  in  the  van  of  British  diplomatic  battle  ; 
yet  the  shock  of  it  has  never  moved,  never  so 
much  as  ruffled,  him.  Time  upon  time  the 
strongest  coalitions  have  been  formed  against 
him ;  the  Khedive,  the  Cabinet,  France, 
Russia,  Turkey  have  combined  to  humiliate 
him.  At  his  back  he  has  had  England,  only 
often  an  England  that  did  not  know  her 
mmd.  But  his  own  mind  Lord  Cromer  has 
always  known,  and  when  things  went  too  far 
his  opponents  came  to  know  it  too. 

At  one  time  it  was  the  recognised  rule  of 
Egyptian  Prime  Ministers — when  in  doubt 
attack  Lord  Cromer.  They  don't  do  it  now. 
At  one  time  it  was  the  favourite  diversion  of 
the  Khedive ;  he  is  not  so  fond  of  it  now. 
At  one  time  France  was  never  weary  of  it ; 
she  lets  him  alone  now.  They  have  mistaken 
accidents  for  essentials,  things  that  did  not 
matter  for  things  that  did  ;  Lord  Cromer  has 
not.  They  have  lost  their  tempers,  and  he  has 
not.  They  have  failed  in  their  resolution ; 
he  has  not.  Often  he  has  appeared  beaten 
on    single   points   and  for  the  time ;  on   the 


188  LORD    CROMER    AND    HIS    WORK. 

main  issue  and  in  the  end  he  has  beaten  them 
all.  And  at  present,  thanks  to  Lord  Cromer, 
there  is  no  Egyptian  question. 

The  Egyptian  question  has  been  answered. 
Lord  Cromer  has  sat  still,  declining  to  be 
worried  or  flurried,  until  it  has  answered 
itself.  The  question  was,  When  is  England 
going  to  quit  Egypt  ?  The  right  answer  was, 
Never.  The  provisional  answer  given  from 
time  to  time  has  been.  When,  first,  it  is  quite 
certain  that  no  other  Power  will  enter  Egypt ; 
and,  second,  Egypt  is  capable  of  setting  up 
a  tolerable  Government  for  itself.  In  the 
course  of  the  past  fifteen  years  the  latter 
answer  to  the  question  has  gradually  approx- 
imated to  the  former.  "  When "  has  come 
gradually  nearer  and  nearer  to  "  Never." 

Twice  in  these  times  we  have  voluntarily 
entered  upon  negotiations  with  a  view  to 
withdrawal ;  each  time  France  has  petulantly 
frustrated  them.  We  need  not  be  surprised 
at  France's  irritation.  If  we  in  1882  had 
incomparably  the  greater  interest  in  Egyptian 
trade,  it  must  be  owned  that  France  had  done 


FRANCE    AND    EGYPT.  189 

more  for  the  country.  France  gave  Egypt 
the  Canal — perhaps  a  doubtful  blessing  from 
the  native  point  of  view ;  she  commenced 
giving  her  the  Barrage ;  she  gave  her  the 
law.  French  manners,  habits,  ideas  had 
spread  far  more  deeply  into  the  social  daily 
life  of  the  country  than  ours — more  deeply 
than  any  European  influence  except  Italian. 
The  French  language  was  more  generally 
known ;  it  was  even  the  official  language  of 
the  country,  and  in  theory  is  still.  But  if, 
having  done  so  much,  France  drew  back  at 
the  critical  moment  and  declined  to.  risk  her 
skin  to  save  her  work,  it  is  with  herself  she 
should  be  angry,  not  with  us. 

But  France  has  sulked,  and  because  she 
has  sulked  her  policy  in  Egypt  has  been  a 
string  of  blunders.  She  locks  up  Egypt's 
money  in  the  Caisse  de  la  Dette  :  well,  then, 
it  will  only  take  us  the  longer  to  put  the 
country  in  order.  She  refuses  funds  for  the 
reconquest  of  the  Sudan  :  well,  then,  Britain 
advances  it,  and  is  it  likely  Britain  will  let 
go    of  territories    conquered    with    her    own 


190  LORD    CROMER    AND    HIS    WORK. 

money?  She  refuses  funds  for  the  Nile 
Reservoir  :  ^  well,  we  are  certainly  not  going 
to  leave  Egypt  without  it.  She  refuses  to 
modify  the  Capitulations,  or  even  to  give  up 
her  separate  post-office :  well,  is  a  country 
that  is  unfit  to  manage  its  own  post  by  itself 
fit  to  manage  anything  ? 

Every  French  move  has  defeated  itself, 
and  it  looks  lately  as  if  France  had  at  last 
discovered  this.  She  has  made  no  difficulty 
about  advances  from  the  Caisse  reserve  for 
irrigation ;  about  the  present  Sudan  expedi- 
tion she  has  not  yet  uttered  one  word.  There 
are  those  who  trace  this  saner  mood  from  the 
date  of  Sir  Michael  Hicks-Beach's  flat  declara- 
tion  that  we  are  not  to  be  worried  out  of 

1  February  2^. — To  Wady  Haifa,  where  I  read  this  over,  too 
late  to  correct  what  I  wrote  about  it  in  the  chapter  on  Irriga- 
tion, comes  a  flimsy  bit  of  paper  from  Renter  &  Co.,  to  the 
effect  that  the  contract  for  the  Reservoir  is  actually  signed. 
It  is  to  take  the  form  of  a  couple  of  barrages  at  Assuan  and 
Assiut  respectively.  But  who  is  going  to  pay  for  these,  and 
how,  and  when,  the  flimsy  does  not  say.  Still,  I  do  not  apolo- 
gise. If  the  French  and  Russian  commissioners  on  the  Caisse 
de  la  Dette  have  released  the  money,  it  confirms  what  I  say 
just  below.  If  they  have  not,  it  justifies  what  I  say  just 
below. 


THE    FRENCH    AND    THE    CLIMATE.  191 

Eg\'pt ;  perhaps  they  are  right.     At  any  rate, 

Sir    Michael    said    well  ;    we    are    not    to    be 

worried  out — and  France  has  left  off  worrying. 

There  is  also  another  reason  for  not  taking 

o 

France  too  seriously  in  Egypt.  Frenchmen 
cannot  stand  the  climate.  I  do  not  speak 
so  much  physically  as  spiritually  :  hardly  a 
Frenchman  ever  can  stand  any  climate  but 
that  of  France.  Now  meet  an  Englishman 
of  sixty  who  has  not  spent  five  years  at 
home  since  he  was  seventeen ;  he  grumbles, 
of  course,  but  as  long  as  he  can  do  his  work 
he  is  game  to  stay  a  year  or  two  more.  For 
that  matter  there  is  an  old  gentleman  in 
Lower  Egypt  who  has  been  in  the  country 
sixty  years,  and  has  so  far  acclimatised  him- 
self as  to  marry  three  native  wives,  each 
with  money.  But  take  a  Frenchman  of  forty 
in  a  public  service  and  offer  him  a  pension ; 
he  is  away  to  France  at  once.  He  is  able, 
honest,  and  patriotic ;  he  knows  he  is  doing 
good  work  for  himself,  for  Egypt,  and,  in- 
directly, for  France  ;  the  climate  is  less  severe 
for   a    Frenchman    than  for   an    Englishman, 


192  LORD    CROMER    AND    HIS    WORK. 

the  mode  of  life  is  far  more  congenial,  the 
salary,  relatively  to  home  standards,  far  more 
princely.  But  give  him  a  chance  to  go  back 
to  France,  and  he  throws  up  work  and  salar 
together,  and  is  off  to  spend  his  pension  in 
his  native  cafe.  That  is  why  France,  for 
all  her  brilliant  imaofination  and  couracfe  and 
cleverness,  has  never  made  a  great  colony, 
and  never  will. 

And  now  what  about  the  natives?  Well, 
there  Is  a  party  against  us,  as  you  know ; 
and  as  the  Khedive  is  the  leader  of  it,  it 
is  perhaps  just  worth  mentioning.  But  hardly 
more,  for  any  danger  there  is  in  it.  Like 
France,  it  is  troublesome  as  long  as  we  let 
it  trouble  us :  when  we  don't,  it  sinks  at 
once  into  silence — or  as  near  silence  as  an 
Egyptian  can  attain.  Take  an  illustration. 
Last  summer,  I  think  it  was,  the  inhabi- 
tants of  a  certain  village  in  Lower  Egypt 
took  occasion  of  Lord  Cromer's  absence  on 
leave  to  stone  a  company  of  mounted  In- 
fantry which  was  marching  through.  Where- 
upon Mr  Bennell  Rodd,  who  was  in  charge. 


NATIVE    OPINION    OF   THE    ENGLISH.        193 

arose  and  had  the  village  —  naturally  with 
the  consent  of  the  Egyptian  authorities  — 
surrounded  by  that  same  company  of  mounted 
infantry,  while  the  ringleaders  were  arrested ; 
and  these  are  now  unloading  rails  and  sleepers 
at  Wady  Haifa,  which  they  dislike.  Soon 
afterwards  the  21st  Lancers  were  marched 
from  Cairo  to  Suez.  Barrels  of  beer  were 
provided  by  a  grateful  fellahin  as  they  passed 
by,  and  everywhere  they  were  received  with 
tumultuous  joy  and  affection.  It  only  needs 
a  little  firmness. 

But  what,  meanwhile — merely  as  a  matter 
of  curiosity,  if  you  like — do  they  say  to  our 
continued  occupation  and  administration  of 
their  country  ?  If  you  ask  them  they  will 
readily  answer  that  it  is  very  wrong.  **  Cer- 
tainly you  should  leave  Egypt,"  they  say ; 
*'  it  is  not  your  country,  and  you  ought  not 
to  keep  it."  Just  the  same  with  officials. 
It  is  a  great  grievance  that  there  are  too 
many  English  officials ;  but  go  to  a  grumbler 
and  say  to  him  that  you  are  appointing  a 
native  inspector  of  irrigation  or  a  native  judge 

N 


194  LORD    CIIOMKU    AND    HIS    WORK. 

In  his  district.  "  Excellent !  "  he  will  say. 
"  It  is  an  excellent  thing  to  employ  native 
officials  ;  only  would  you  mind  sending  him 
to  some  other  district  ?  My  water  and  my 
justice  I  would  sooner  have  from  an  English- 
man." So  they  are  almost  unanimous  that 
we  ought  to  go  ;  only  when  it  comes  to  the 
point  of  when  and  how,  there  begin  to  be 
difficulties.  Nubar  Pasha  is  quite  certain  he 
could  govern  the  country  beautifully,  if  only 
the  English  officials  would  all  go  away  and 
leave  him  the  Army  of  Occupation.  Tigrane 
Pasha  is  absolutely  confident  of  his  ability 
to  govern  the  country,  if  only  the  Army  of 
Occupation  would  go  away  and  leave  him 
the  officers  and  irrigation  engineers.  Ob- 
serve that  both  these  gentlemen,  honest  and 
capable  as  they  are,  are  Armenians — that  Is 
to  say,  no  more  Egyptians  than  Lord  Cromer 
is,  and  without  Lord  Cromer's  habit  and 
tradition  of  rule.  How  long  would  they  re- 
main there?  As  for  the  editor  of  the  prin- 
cipal French  paper  of  Egypt,  he  is  a  great 
deal  sharper-sighted.      "  Certainly  you  ought 


A   PROUD    RECORD.  195 

to  go,"  says  he ;  "as  I  say,  your  action  here 
is  an  abomination"  —  he  does  say  so,  too  — 
"but  as  for  me,  I  go  also  by  the  last  boat 
before  you  do," 

And  that  is  what  would  happen.  The  wise 
virgins  would  leave  by  the  last  boat  before 
us,  with  their  realised  property ;  the  foolish 
ones  would  leave  by  the  first  boat  after, 
without  it.  We  have  done  much  for  the 
Egyptian ;  we  have  given  him  security,  jus- 
tice, water,  better  times  than  he  has  ever 
had  before.  We  have  even  gone  far  to  make 
a  soldier  of  him.  Our  record  is  one  which 
any  other  nation  would  be  proud  of,  which 
no  other  nation  could  achieve.  But  one 
thing,  so  far,  we  have  failed  with  —  the 
Egyptian.  We  have  not  made  a  man  of 
him.  Take  the  very  best  of  them  —  an  in- 
telligent, industrious,  honest  official,  whom 
his  English  chief  is  sincerely  trying  to  push 
forward  into  a  commanding  position.  He 
will  come  to  that  chief,  and  beg  and  pray 
to  be  relieved  of  responsibility.  He  doesn't 
like  it.     It  terrifies  him.     He  is  not  a  man. 


196  LORD    CROMER   AND    HIS    WORK. 

There  are  only  two  forces  in  Egypt  to-, 
day.  Of  the  two  forces,  one  you  know — 
Lord  Cromer,  Sir  William  Garstin,  who  gives 
water,  and  Sir  John  Scott,  who  gives  justice, 
and  the  screw -guns  on  the  Citadel,  which 
can  shell  any  street  in  Cairo  at  the  call 
of  a  telephone.  The  other  force  you  may 
see  on  one  side  in  the  o^abblinc^  fanaticism 
of  El  Azhar  Mosque,  on  the  other  in  the 
Turkish  aristocracy.  If  we  go,  the  Turk 
must  rule  again.  The  Turk  is  a  gentleman, 
and  a  man,  and  a  ruler  of  men.  Only  he 
would  rule  the  Arab  in  his  own  way  —  the 
old  way.  The  water  would  all  go  to  his 
fields ;  the  cases  would  all  go  in  his  favour ; 
the  labour  would  all  go,  unpaid,  to  build 
his  palace ;  his  rent  and  his  taxes  would 
be  thrashed  out  of  the  Arab  with  a  stick. 
And  then — since  the  Arab  is  by  now  accus- 
tomed to  other  things — another  Arabi. 

Therefore,  we  shall  go  on  ruling  in  our 
way. 


197 


XVIT. 

BITS   OF   OLD   AND   NEW. 

RUMOURS  OF  WAR — THE  PYRAMIDS — THE  VIEW  FROM  THE  ORKAT 
PYRAMID — A  VISIT  TO   THE  ARSENAL. 

January  28.  —  I  thought  I  was  leaving 
Egypt,  not  for  good — one  does  not  like  the 
idea  of  never  seeing  Egypt  again — but  at 
any  rate  for  a  good  while.  Now  here  I  am 
back  again  in  a  fortnight.  And  if  the  air 
breathed  war  when  I  went  away,  it  breathes 
fire  and  slaughter  now.  The  Government, 
you  must  know,  in  pursuance  of  that  policy 
which  has  always  drawn  a  mysterious  and 
perhaps  prudent  veil  over  its  intentions  about 
the  Sudan,  has  decided  that  correspondents 
are  not  to  be  allowed  to  go  to  Berber,  which 
is  a  little  behind  the  actual  front.  There 
are  fifteen  thousand  men  or  so  beyond  Mail- 


198  BITS    OF    OLD    AND    NEW. 

head,  so  that  it  can  hardly  be  want  of 
transport  that  prompts  the  decision ;  besides 
which,  correspondents  always  find  their  own 
transport.  Moreover,  there  were  half-a-dozen 
correspondents  at  Berber  last  year,  who  did 
the  place  no  harm  I  ever  heard  of  •  moreover, 
there  is  a  censor. 

All  this  is  of  more  Interest  to  me  than  it  is 
to  you,  perhaps.  But  I  am  moved  to  reflect 
on  it  by  the  fact  that,  thanks  to  the  Govern- 
ment's obscurantism,  all  Cairo  at  this  moment 
is  rustling  with  the  wildest  rumours.  There 
has  been  a  defeat  at  the  front  with  heavy 
loss  ;  the  gunboats  are  partly  stranded  and 
partly  captured ;  Slatin  Pasha  —  0  mal- 
heureux,  remarks  a  French  organ  with  feel- 
ing—  has  been  retaken  by  the  dervishes.^ 
As  for  the  Egyptian  army,  the  gloomiest 
reports  go  abroad  concerning  it.  The  Egyp- 
tians, they  say,  have  been  harried  to  mutiny 
over  the  railway ;  the  Sudanese  deprived  of 
their    women    till    they    mutiny,    too ;    you 

^  February  18. — Need  I  say  that  the  first  person  I  saw  at 
Watly  Haifa  was  Slatin? 


THE    Fi'CAMIDS.  199 

would  think  half  the  army  was  shot  away 
for  insubordination  by  this  time.  Of  course 
all  these  stories  are  the  wildest  nonsense : 
that  is  declared  sufficiently  by  the  stamj)  of 
the  people  that  circulate  them.  But  the  fact 
remains  that  Cairo  is  very  uneasy.  It  doesn't 
matter  much,  to  be  sure;  but  «o  far  as  it 
does  matter,  the  Government  is  to  blame  for 
acting  as  if  it  had  things  to  conceal. 

January  29. — To  relax  my  mind — for  you 
can't  show  yourself  in  hotel  or  restaurant  or 
street  without  being  told  or  asked  for  some 
new  thing — I  have  been  taking  a  morning 
with  the  Pyramids.  There  is  no  fretful 
rumour  -  mongering  about  them.  They  have 
looked  down  quite  apathetically  on  more  great 
things  than  you  or  I  or  any  history-book  ever 
heard  of,  and  they  are  not  going  to  trouble 
themselves  now  about  the  movements  of 
dervishes  or  anybody  else.  It  was  a  great 
refreshment  to  go  out  and  look  at  them — so 
enormous,  so  moveless,  so  battered  by  time 
and  spoilers,  and  yet  so  imperturbably  in- 
destructible. 


200  BITS    OF    OLD    AND    NEW. 

Most  people  are  disappointed  with  them ; 
they  say  they  are  not  near  so  large  as  they 
expected.  I  don't  know  what  these  people 
looked  for ;  they  are  quite  large  enough  for 
me.  You  must  know  that  they  stand  quite 
alone  in  the  desert — a  village  or  two  and  a 
hotel  in  sight  of  them ;  but  this  environment 
is  part  of  them,  not  they  part  of  it.  They 
are  not  a  part  of  anything,  the  Pyramids : 
they  just  stand  up,  themselves,  dominating 
the  flat  Egyptian  fields  on  one  side,  and  the 
furrows  of  the  desert  on  the  other.  Large 
or  not,  they  get  all  the  advantage  of  their 
size,  whatever  it  is ;  and,  in  truth,  their  size 
is  sufficient  for  any  purpose.  There  is  some- 
thing in  the  shape  of  a  pyramid,  too,  that 
makes  it  an  impressive  monument — it  stands 
so  solidly  upon  its  feet,  so  square  and  im- 
movable ;  yet  the  taper  of  it  prevents  it  from 
ever  looking  unwieldy.  The  third  pyramid 
is  small — not  in  itself,  but  by  comparison — 
and  if  I  had  been  the  king  that  built  it,  I 
would  rather  have  been  forgotten  altogether 
than  only  remembered  as  the  man  who  put 


AN    UNEXCITING    CLIMB.  201 

up  a  pyramid  insignificantly  smaller  than 
those  of  his  predecessors.  But  the  other 
two  —  they  must  be  surely  the  sublimest 
monuments  in  the  world.  No  others  can 
give  so  crushing  an  impression  of  absolute 
independence  of  everything  —  of  stability 
equal  to  looking  down  on  every  convulsion 
and  cataclysm  that  the  world  can  know, 
and  still  stably  looking  down  on  what  shall 
follow  on  the  end  of  it. 

Of  course  I  walked  up  the  Great  Pyramid. 
I  am  afraid  there  is  nothing  particularly  ex- 
citing about  it.  It  is  rather  like  walking  up 
a  small  mountain.  You  have  your  guides — 
you  need  not,  unless  you  want  to,  but  it 
saves  a  lot  of  trouble — and  they  take  you 
firmly  by  each  hand  and  pull  at  you.  The 
slope  of  the  Pyramid  is  in  steps — here  even 
like  a  staircase,  there  broken  away  like  a 
cliff-face — and  the  only  difiiculty  is  that  you 
often  have  to  cock  your  leg  as  high  as  your 
head  to  get  from  one  to  the  other.  And 
when  you  get  up  there  is  a  small  flat  space 
to   stand   on    while   you   look   at    Cairo   and 


202  BITS    OF    OLD    AND    NEW, 

Egypt  and  the  desert.  Only,  to  tell  the 
truth,  Cairo  and  Egypt  and  the  desert  look 
exactly  as  you  knew  they  would  look.  A 
jumble  of  brown  buildings  for  Cairo,  with 
the  minarets  of  the  Citadel  mosque  shooting 
up  above  it ;  a  chess  -  board  of  green  and 
brown  for  Egypt ;  a  boundless  sea  of  sand 
for  the  desert — that  is  all  you  see  from  the 
Great  Pyramid.  More  of  it  than  you  can 
Bee  from  anywhere  else ;  but  more  of  just 
the  same  thing. 

January  30. — To  correct,  in  its  turn,  the 
impression  of  the  untroubled  Pyramids,  I 
went  to-day  to  see  the  Arsenal.  It  is  on 
the  lower  slopes  of  the  Citadel,  and  it  is 
presided  over  by  a  nephew  of  Gordon.  In 
England  he  would  be  a  subaltern  of  En- 
gineers ;  in  Egypt  he  is  the  man  who  forges 
the  weapons  which  are  to  avenge  his  uncle. 
I  don't  know  enough  about  such  things  to 
describe  to  you  the  engines  which  are  turning 
out  Egypt's  armoury ;  but  the  whole  thing 
is  typical  of  British  Egypt.  Here  is  the 
old   second  -  hand   material,    the    bad    native 


THE   ARSENAL.  203 

workmen,  and  the  practical,  undiscouraged 
Englishman,  who  surmounts  everything  by 
his  ingenuity  and  his  perseverance.  There 
is  hardly  a  machine  in  the  Arsenal  that  is 
running  now  on  the  same  work  as  it  was 
built  for.  They  are  all  old  and  damaged 
and  derelict ;  but  they  have  been  patched 
up  and  adapted  and  fitted  for  something  or 
other  that  will  tend  to  keep  Egypt  going. 
There  is  one  machine  cutting  off  the  ends 
of  Martini  barrels,  whose  rifling  has  been 
worn  away,  and  turning  them  into  carbines. 
Here  is  another  machine  using  the  cut-off 
ends  as  part  of  the  sight  for  a  Maxim- 
Nordenfeldt.  Here  is  everything  in  prepar- 
ation that  the  Egyptian  Army  needs,  from 
gunboats  to  camel -saddles  and  boots.  All 
done  on  the  cheap,  with  sweat  and  swear- 
ing— but  all  done.  The  material  is  Egypt, 
and  the  triumph  over  it  is  Britain  :  British 
Egypt  is  the  picturesque  incredible  com- 
bination of  the  two. 


204 


XVIII. 

THE   PILGRIMS. 

THE  DRAGOMAN  ADDRESSES  THE  TOURISTS— THE  NOMENCLATURK 
OF  DONKEYS — THE   TOMB   OF  THI — MORE  ENJOYABLE  TOMBS. 

February  2. — The  dragoman — a  fat  figure  in 
green  robe  and  wonderful  silk  skirt,  a  fat 
brown  face  below  a  gold  -  worked  turban  — 
entered  the  dining-room,  faced  his  flock  with 
proud  modesty,  and  clapped  his  hands.  In- 
stantly the  clatter  of  lunch  sank  to  expectant 
silence. 

"Ladies  and  shentleman,"  he  began,  in  the 
long-drawn  accents  of  the  muezzin  who  sum- 
mons the  faithful  to  prayer,  "  in  one  half  an 
hour  the  steamer  will  stop  at  Bedrechein. 
Then  we  shall  take  donkeys  and  ride  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour  to  the  gre-eat  statue  of 
Ilameses   the    Second.      Then    we    shall   ride 


A    DEVOTIONAL   BAND.  205 

three-quarters  of  one  hour  to  the  gre-e-eat 
pyraniids  of  Sikkara,  and  we  shall  enter  the 
gre-e-eat  tomb  of  Thi.  Then  we  shall  return 
one  hour  and  one  half  to  the  steamer,  where 
you  shall  have  tea."  Then  he  paused,  and  a 
benevolent  grin  slowly  overspread  the  acreage 
of  his  face.  "  Ladies  and  shentleman,"  he 
pursued,  "  live  together  and  love  one  another. 
Eemember  the  words  of  the  programme: 
Birds  in  deir  little  nestes  aggree." 

He  was  gone :  almost  immediately  the 
Cook's  tourist  steamer  Rameses  the  Great 
had  pulled  up  at  Bedrechein,  and  our  pilgrim- 
age had  begun.  There  were  exactly  eighty 
of  us — English,  French,  Germans,  Belgians, 
South  Africans,  Americans,  and  Australians, 
from  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth.  There 
were  many  elderly  men,  a  great  host  of  young 
women,  five  men  under  thirty,  and  three 
children  under  ten.  Our  mood  was  devo- 
tional. We  regarded  the  dragoman  with 
respect,  and  the  great  tomb  of  Thi  with  awe. 
Our  trusty  cameras  were  slung  at  our  backs : 
our  diaries  lay  in  our  cabins  with  our  stylo- 


206  THE   PILGRIMS, 

graphs  at  half-cock  beside  them :  the  two 
hours  since  we  left  Cairo  had  been  given  to 
the  diligent  study  of  a  book  full  of  queer 
pictures  of  circles  and  hieroglyphic  ducks  and 
hares  couchant,  with  which  Mr  Cook  had 
presented  each  of  us  on  leaving.  And  now 
we  were  about  to  see  all  these  things.  Up 
and  down  the  long  dining-tables  every  face 
was  set  with  high  purpose. 

Already  Mohammed  was  on  the  sandy 
beach,  selecting  donkeys.  Out  we  streamed 
after  him  into  a  sea  of  waving  brown  arms 
and  legs  surging  furiously  over  the  little 
island  of  beasts.  Some  of  the  elder  ladies 
mounted  chairs,  and  were  borne  off,  palan- 
quin fashion,  on  the  shoulders  of  four  boat- 
men. The  rest  climbed  with  delicious  quavers 
on  to  donkeys,  the  donkey  -  boys  screamed, 
and  yelled,  and  whacked,  and  we  were  off.  ' 

I  fancy  the  donkey  was  one  of  the  few 
animals  not  worshipped  by  the  ancient  Egyp- 
tians ;  it  has  its  revenge  now.  The  tomb  of 
Thi  was  forgotten,  and  seventy  minds — allow- 
ing for  ten  who  did  not  face  the  fatigues  of 


THE   NAMING   OF    THE    NILE   DONKEY.      207 

the  expedition — were  fixed  intently  on  don- 
keys. "  Have  you  a  satisfactory  donkey,  sir, 
may  I  ask  ?  "  says  the  Chicago  colonel,  gravely. 
"  Say,  Juliet,  what's  your  donkey's  name  ? " 
"  M'Kinley,  the  boy  says."  "  So's  mine ; 
they're  all  M'Kinleys  here,  I  guess."  It  does 
not  occur  to  the  American  mind — which  leaves 
its  vigilant  shrewdness  behind  it  when  it 
crosses  the  Atlantic — that  the  Nile  donkey 
has  as  many  names  as  the  old  Nile  kings. 
M'Kinley  and  Yankee  Doodle  for  an  Ameri- 
can rider,  Jubilee  for  a  British,  Moses  or 
Abraham  for  the  pious,  Ta-ra-ra  Boom-de-ay 
for  the  worldling — the  name  of  the  useful 
creature  follows  automatically  the  prospects 
of  backsheesh. 

By  now  we  had  passed  under  a  grove  of 
dusty  palms,  over  the  railway  embankment, 
threaded  the  mud-walled  alleys  of  the  village, 
and  were  out,  a  straggling  column  a  couple  of 
miles  long,  among  fields  of  young  clover  and 
springing  corn.  We  had  not  waited  to  hear 
Mohammed  lecture  on  the  great  statue  of 
Rameses.     We    came    on    it  suddenly  among 


2 OS  THE    PILGRIMS. 

])alm  trees;  but  it  has  tumbled  down  and 
i;ot  broken,  and  hieroglyphics  are  crawling 
all  over  it.  It  is  not  bad  for  a  barbarian 
people,  but  not  the  sort  of  thing  to  detain 
light-minded  children  like  Jack,  and  Nellie, 
and  me.  For  that  matter,  Nellie  couldn't 
stop  if  she  wanted  to  :  with  her  hat  tilted 
off  her  freckled  face,  and  her  red  hair  float- 
ing behind  her,  she  has  been  scolding  her 
donkey-boy  for  half  an  hour  in  useless  Aus- 
tralian. "  Stop,  you  horrid  boy,  when  I  tell 
you  !  Oh,  you  are  nasty  !  Oh,  do  tell  him 
to  stop.  I've  told  him  in  good  English,  and 
if  he  doesn't  understand  that  I  should  like  to 
know  what  he  does  understand."  Whereon 
the  half-naked  Arab,  conceiving  himself  to  be 
earning  high  praise  and  backsheesh,  falls  to 
whacking  the  donkey  mightily.  "  Yes,  go 
quick,"  he  pants  ;  "  very  good  donkey,  good 
l)oy,  good  backsheesh."  And  "  No  I  "  screams 
Nellie,  rocking  helplessly  to  and  fro.  "No! 
Do  you  know  what  '  no '  means  ?     Well ! " 

But  it  doesn't  need  the  concentrated  indig- 
nation of  that  "  Well !  " — we  are  all  stopping. 


THE    TOMB    OF    MERA.  209 

We  have  arrived  at  something.  It  doesn't 
look  very  much — a  clearing  in  the  up-and- 
down  of  sand,  with  a  skylight  and  a  path 
leading  down  to  an  underground  door.  Still, 
it  must  be  an  antiquity,  and  we  try  to  com- 
pose our  minds.  The  donkey-boys  brought 
clover  inside  their  shirts,  and  have  been  try- 
ing to  induce  us  to  buy  their  own  fodder  and 
feed  their  own  donkeys  with  it,  but  now  they 
see  that  we  are  about  to  proceed  to  business. 
"Tomb,"  they  cry,  with  enthusiasm,  ''tomb  of 
Mera,"  and  smile  all  over,  as  if  you  wanted 
nothing  but  a  good  tomb  to  ensure  a  happy 
afternoon.  "  Oh,  it's  only  a  tomb,  is  it  ?  "  says 
Jack,  and  "  Well,  all  I  can  say  is,"  adds  Nellie, 
"I  don't  think  much  of  it."  But  the  colonel 
is  perturbed  even  unto  making  a  short  speech. 
**  Ladles  and  gentlemen,  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  we  should  have  been  better  advised  to 
have  proceeded  less  precipitately.  I  guess 
he  may  have  gone  around  to  that  other  tomb 
he  mentioned ;  then  we  shall  have  missed 
considerable  information." 

The  facile  "  I  don't  care  !  "  which  springs  to 
o 


210  THE    PILGRIMS. 

Nellie's  lips  is  choked  in  the  general  gasp  oi 
consternation.  But  somebody  looks  back  to 
where  the  donkeys  tail  out  across  the  sand 
and  raises  a  joyful  cry.  Here  is  Mohammed. 
He  dismounts  with  dignity,  and  orders  the 
doors  of  the  tomb  to  be  thrown  open.  Show 
your  tickets  at  the  door,  without  which  one 
may  not  see  antiquities.  Take  a  candle  from 
the  guardian  at  the  door  and  step  in.  The 
moment  has  come ;    we  are  in  a  tomb ! 

Except  for  the  sheer  delight  and  impertin- 
ence of  being  in  the  tomb  of  somebody  else 
very  much  older  than  yourself,  I  am  not  sure 
there  is  very  much  in  it  after  all.  It  is  half- 
a-dozen  chambers  hewn  in  the  rock  which 
underlies  the  desert  sand,  and  our  company 
quite  fills  it  up.  There  are  some  rudimentary 
carvings  on  the  wall  still  splashed  with  faint 
red  and  yellow,  and  there  is  a  statue  of  the 
entombed  himself — an  angular  person  of  a 
brick-red  colour  attired  in  what  Mohammed 
tactfully  calls  a  kilt.  Furthermore,  Moham- 
med, scraping  the  walls  with  his  nose  and 
a  candle,  at  length   discovers  a  hieroglyphic 


THE   QUESTION    OF   DYNASTY.  211 

which  he  alleges  he  can  read.  He  bellows 
it  out  in  thunderous  triumph  :  "  How  many, 
how  many  hat  ? "  it  sounds  like,  and  the  re- 
verberating tomb  takes  up  the  query,  "  How 
many,  how  many  hat  ?  "  "  That  proves  it,  you 
see,"  says  the  maiden  lady  in  yellow  hair 
and  blue  spectacles :  "it  must  be  the  Sixth 
Dynasty." 

Two  more  enjoyable  tombs  we  accomplished 
that  afternoon.  One  was  a  cemetery  for  sacred 
bulls,  but  the  mummies  have  all  been  taken 
away,  and  it  did  not  differ  materially  from  the 
monument  of  a  mere  high  priest.  However, 
we  were  very  careful  to  get  the  dynasty  right 
in  each  case,  and  if  we  had  only  looked  into 
eleven  graves  when  there  were  really  twelve, 
we  went  back  with  a  candle  to  look  into  the 
twelfth.  If  looking  into  empty  holes  will 
enrich  our  minds,  we  have  every  prospect  of 
coming  home  very  superior  spirits  to  all  you 
who  have  never  been  up  the  Nile. 

But  now  we  are  out  of  school.  "Every- 
thing seen,  ladies  and  shentleman ;  you  can 
go  home,"   says  Mohammed,   and  off  we  go. 


212  THE    PILGRIMS. 

The  air  is  cool  now  over  the  corn  and  clover ; 
the  foUali  pusliing  at  his  wooden  plough  is 
tliinking  of  going  home.  Some  of  us  are 
wondering  how  stiff  we  shall  be  to-morrow, 
others  striving  to  contain  the  name  of  "  How 
man}',  how  many  hat "  till  we  get  to  our 
diaries.  Speaking  for  Nellie  and  Jack  and 
myself,  I  am  not  sure  there  was  not  a  thought 
of  tea.  Anyhow,  here  is  the  steamer  again. 
The  tour  is  only  seven  hours  old,  and  of  that 
five  have  been  spent  ashore,  but  already  the 
steamer  is  home.  Here  are  Arabs  to  brush 
the  dust  of  Thi  off  our  boots,  and  tea  is 
waiting  on  deck.  We  are  warm  and  thirsty : 
what  more  can  anybody  ask  ?  "  Were  the 
objects  interesting  ? "  asks  the  old  gentleman 
who  did  not  go.  Of  an  enthralling  fascina- 
tion, we  tell  him — and  so  they  were,  I  don't 
know  wliy  :  yet  everybody,  you  find,  has  been 
enjoying  it  enormously.  So  the  steamer 
casts  off,  and  Jack  and  Nellie  turn  to  hiofh 
tea,  and  tlie  other  pilgrims,  before  dinner  be 
ready,  seize  greedily  upon  note-books. 


213 


XIX. 

THE   PANORAMA. 

BCBNERY  ON  THE  BANKS  OF  THE  NILE — THE  WATER-HOISTS — 
ASSIOUT — A  MONSTER  BAT — SUGAR  REFINERIES — THE  OLD 
AND  THE   NEW. 

February  5. — Breakfast  8.30,  lunch  1.0,  tea 
4.30,  dinner  7.0,  lights  out  11.0.  "Early  to 
bed  and  early  to  rise,"  remarked  Mohammed, 
in  one  of  his  latest  speeches,  ''makes  you 
healthy,  we-ealthy,  and  wise."  For  myself, 
I  was  healthy  before,  and  have  given  up 
all  hope  of  ever  being  wealthy  or  wise,  and 
I  could  do  with  a  later  breakfast  and  lights 
on  a  little  longer.  But  that  is  a  small 
thing ;  and,  after  all,  Mr  Cook,  though 
stern,  is  very  kind,  and  I  am  not  sure  but 
his    recrulations   are    for   the   best.      For  the 

c5 


214  THE   PANORAMA. 

keynote  of  the  Nile  life  is  peace ;  it  is  an 
existence  placid,  regular,  reposeful. 

There  is  just  enough  variety  in  it  to  keep 
your  mind  awake,  and  just  enough  same- 
ness to  keep  it  off  the  stretch.  There  is 
just  enough  excursionising  ashore  to  per- 
suade you  that  you  are  not  lazy,  and  just 
enough  lazying  aboard  to  assure  you  that  you 
are  enjoying  rest.  You  pick  up  letters  on 
the  way,  enough  to  remind  you  that  you  are 
of  the  world,  and  to  convince  you  blessedly 
that  for  the  moment  you  are  not  in  it.  A 
vision  of  half-  barbarous  life  passes  before 
you  all  day,  and  you  survey  it  in  the  in- 
tervals of  French  cooking.  You  are  not  to 
worry,  not  to  jolan,  not  to  arrange  about 
anything ;  you  are  just  to  sit  easy  and  be 
happy. 

You  come  up  in  the  morning,  and  there, 
steel-blue  in  the  sun,  shines  the  benevolent 
Nile.  You  forget  how  many  days  you  have 
been  looking  at  it ;  you  could  look  at  this 
miracle  for  ever.  Just  now  we  are  under 
a  bank   of  low,   brown    cliff,   the    frontier   of 


RURAL   EGYPT.  215 

the  desert.  On  the  other  side  is  a  flat 
green  plain  —  so  flat  that  you  can  see  no 
end  to  it,  though  the  transparent  blue  film 
of  another  distant  line  of  hills  reminds  you 
that  on  that  side  also  the  desert  presses. 
Over  the  green  rim  rise  groves  of  palms, 
the  silhouette  of  a  man  with  a  mattock,  of 
a  woman  striding  erect  beneath  her  water- 
jar,  of  a  fat,  turbaned  sheikh  on  a  donkey. 
Now  we  are  swinging  across  from  under  the 
bluffs  past  an  eyot  of  yellow  sand  towards 
the  fertile  side ;  already  the  navigable 
channel  is  narrow  and  devious,  even  at  this 
season,  and  the  long-gowned  pilot  on  the 
bridge  seldom  has  his  hand  off"  the  wheel. 
Now  the  solitary  palms  thicken  into  groves 
with  a  clump  or  two  of  denser  acacias  :  here 
is  a  village.  Mud  huts  pierced  by  loop- 
hole windows,  rush  firewood  stacked  on  the 
roofs,  black  veils  carrying  water,  young  boys, 
half  blue  shirt,  half  brown  nakedness,  pad- 
dling in  the  river.  Kural  Egypt  at  Kodak 
range  —  and  you  sitting  in  a  long  chair  to 
look  at  it. 


/ 


216  THE    FANORAMA. 

February  6. — Through  all  Its  twists  and 
changes  the  Nile  never  loses  its  character 
of  the  ancient  begetter  of  life.  The  border- 
ing hills,  the  green  clover,  the  mud  huts, 
the  black  yashmaks,  and  the  blue  galabeahs 
— they  are  all  the  setting  and  the  fruit  and 
the  children  of  the  Nile.  Steel-blue  in  the 
sunshine,  his  waters  are  coffee-brown  in  the 
shade — that  is  the  off-scouring  of  the  Abys- 
sinian mountains,  the  Egypt  -  making  mud. 
You  take  him  in  your  bath  of  a  morning ; 
he  is  vestry  carts  to  look  at,  but  velvet  to 
wallow  in.  And  now  we  are  plugging  past 
a  twenty-foot  river  bank,  semaphored  with 
miles  of  water  -  hoists.  At  the  bottom  a 
man  pulls  down  the  cross-bar  till  the  straw- 
plaited  bucket  dips  in  the  river ;  the  weight 
at  the  other  end  of  the  beam  pulls  it  up, 
and  He  empties  it  into  a  mud  hollow  six 
feet  up  the  bank.  Down  dips  another  cala- 
bash to  meet  it,  and  lifts  it  to  the  next 
pool.  Then  down  dips  a  third,  and  the 
fertiliser  is  at  the  top  of  the  bank  swishing 
away  through   the   ditches  on   to   the  fields. 


AN    IDEAL   HOLIDAY.  217 

Clumsy  irrigation,  you  say  ;  but  Egypt  adds 
this  to  its  other  wonders,  that  machinery 
has  not  yet  been  able  to  supplant  the  human 
body.  They  have  tried  turbines  and  hydrau- 
lic rams,  and  all  sorts  of  contrivances,  but 
they  do  not  work,  or  work  too  expensively, 
and  they  fall  back  on  machine-saving  labour 
again. 

And  with  that  it  is  lunch-time  —  for  one 
glory  of  the  Nile  life  is  that  each  meal  seems 
to  follow  half  an  hour  on  the  last,  and  yet 
you  are  always  hungry.  At  the  end  of 
lunch  we  shall  find  ourselves  opposite  a 
landing  -  stage,  with  donkeys  in  the  back- 
ground. The  other  day — which  day  was  it  ? 
Thank  heaven  !  I  do  not  know,  so  you  can 
see  what  a  holiday  this  is — it  was  Assiout, 
the  largest  town  of  the  Upper  Egyptian 
Nile,  the  old  starting  -  point  of  the  *forty- 
day  desert  caravans  to  Darfur.  Backsheesh, 
backsheesh — the  national  anthem  of  Egypt — 
strikes  familiarly  on  our  ears  :  we  are  callous 
to  it  now.  Also  we  have  lost  our  awe  of 
antiquities  ;   in  our  leisure  we  talk  of  Egypt 


218  THE    PANORAMA. 

as  it  is,  without  bothering  about  the  eleventh 
dynasty,  or  else  of  our  own  affairs — books 
and  money  and  war,  cotton  in  Bolton,  and 
sulphate  on  the  Rand,  sheep  in  South  Aus- 
tralia, and  coal  round  Pittsburg.  So  we  go 
out  and  seize  on  donkeys,  with  an  easy  and 
irresponsible  mind. 

We  scuttle  off  like  a  specially  irregular 
troop  of  irregular  cavalry,  kicking  up  a 
choking  dust-storm.  We  stream  out  on  to 
the  main  road,  embanked  against  flood-time, 
and  across  the  railways.  We  plunge  tumul- 
tuously  into  the  dark  bazaar,  and  buy  two- 
penny-halfpenny pottery  and  fivepenny  cutting 
whips.  Then  in  and  out  we  thread  the  mud- 
walled  alleys,  and  arrive  at  the  bottom  of  what 
Mohammed  calls  the  mountain  :  really  it  is 
only  the  ridge  between  green  and  desert. 
We  patter  up  the  crumbling  shale  to  the 
tomb  of  Merry  Christmas  —  that  at  least  is 
what  his  name  sounds  like,  and  he  was  either 
a  general  or  a  high  priest  in  something  be- 
tween the  fifth  and  twenty  -  fifth  dynasties. 
What  does  it  matter?     We  don't  come  here 


A    REAL    LIVE    BAT. 


219 


to  learn  lessons ;  we  are  children  out  for  a 
holiday.  The  Chicago  colonel  himself  has 
left  off  taking  down  the  names  of  tomb- 
holders  in  his  note  -  book,  and  now  uncon- 
scientiously  copies  them  into  his  diary  out  of 
the  guide. 


Market-place,  Egypt, 

It  Is  much  more  to  the  point  when  Mo- 
hammed throws  a  stone  down  a  hole,  and 
the  priest  of  the  somethingth  dynasty  whirs 
up  out  of  it  in  the  shape  of  an  enormous 
bat.     Nelly   lets    out    a   whoop   of  joy  and 


220  THE   PANORAMA. 

terror,  and  the  younger  maidens  wonder  if 
it  is  roosting  in  their  hair,  and  the  elder 
maidens  are  led  to  seats  on  rocks.  Mummies 
and  hieroglyphics  we  have  grown  old  among, 
but  a  real  live  bat  is  something  to  talk  about. 
Why  not  ?  A  little  thing — but  are  we  not 
children  out  of  school? 

Then  those  of  us  that  are  feeling  very 
well — and  the  proportion  rises  day  by  day — 
pound  on  up  to  the  very  top  of  the  rocks, 
and  look  down.  Below  us  in  the  haze  basks 
Assiout,  with  its  minarets.  At  our  very  feet, 
on  the  edge  of  the  belt  of  cultivation,  is 
another  city — a  city  of  mud  walls,  and  white- 
wash, and  domes.  It  seems  as  large  as  As- 
siout, but  quite  empty  —  only  it  is  not,  for 
it  is  a  thickly  -  peopled  cemetery.  On  our 
right  is  the  valley  of  the  Nile  —  a  steely 
thread  through  broad  acres  of  glowing,  living 
green.  This  is  already  the  second  crop  of 
clover  since  the  flood  reached  its  heights  in 
September :  three  weeks  back  it  was  just 
sprouting ;  to-day  it  covers  the  earth  like  a 
carpet.     And  leftward  and  behind  us  is  the 


SUGAR-REFINERIES.  221 

desert,  the  cruel,  haunting,  yellow  desert, 
with  camel  -  trains  trailing  over  it  like  ants. 
In  that  one  view  you  see  all  Egypt — the 
river,  the  life  of  the  valley,  and  the  death 
of  the  desert ;  the  city  of  the  living  in  the 
one,  the  city  of  the  dead  with  its  foot  on  the 
threshold  of  the  other. 

Then  back  to  our  welcoming  steamer.  Cast 
off,  and  then  more  Nile,  more  Egypt — daily 
more  familiar,  daily  more  fascinating.  We 
are  in  the  region  of  sugar-refineries  now ;  for 
every  minaret  there  rises  a  tall  stack  vomiting 
black  smoke.  One  we  have  visited — a  jangle 
of  whirring  wheels,  cane  sliding  up  whole 
and  coming:  down  broken  shreds  and  oozingf 
juice,  sweltering  furnaces,  filters,  tanks  full 
of  glutinous  sweetness,  and  whirling  cent- 
rifugal crystallisers.  Toiling  in  this  western 
jangle  were  just  the  same  grinning,  half- 
naked,  chocolate  Arabs  as  hoist  up  the  water 
with  their  antediluvian  levers  and  buckets, 
or  go  out  on  the  merry  backsheesh  hunt. 
We  anchored  there  for  the  nig-ht.  On  one 
side  was  the  belching  factory,  with  its  three 


222  THE    TANORAMA. 


J 


big  chimneys  and  ten  little  ones  :  they  work 
day  and  night  during  the  two  months  of  the  | 

crushing  season,  and  the  blackness  of  the 
smoke  blotted  out  the  falling  sun.  But  close 
beside  them  was  a  grove  of  drooping  palms 
and  a  dome  and  minaret  —  black,  too,  but 
clear  black  tracery  against  the  blazing  gold  ' 
of  sunset.  The  gold  faded,  and  the  white 
moon  lit  to  silver ;  the  tender  blue  curtain 
of  darkness  brooded  down  over  the  floating 
blue  Nile  ;  the  minarets  suddenly  dwindled 
into  slender  columns  of  fire,  with  the  hang- 
inir  lanterns  of  Ramadan.  Close  at  their  side 
the  chimneys  belched  and  belched,  griming 
the  moonlight.  It  was  yet  another  paradox 
of  Eg3^pt — the  old  and  the  new. 


22a 


XX. 

THE   RUINS. 

LUXOR — THEBES — COLOSSAL    RUINS — THE   TOMBS    OF    THE    KIN08 
— KARNAK — THE   COLOSSI   OF   MEMNON. 

February  8. — Until  I  saw  Luxor  I  had  the 
poorest  idea  possible  of  the  abilities  and 
achievements  of  the  ancient  Egyptians. 
When  I  had  seen  it  I  only  wished  I  could 
have  been  an  ancient  Egyptian  myself  to 
see  Luxor  in  its  prime. 

For  Luxor  stands  on  the  site  of  the  great 
city  of  Uast — ancient  Thebes  —  the  fame  of 
whose  greatness  had  come  even  to  Homer's 
ears  when  he  sang  of  its  hundred  gates 
and  twenty  thousand  war  -  chariots.  But 
Homer,  at  the  very  beginning  of  European 
civilisation,  was  a  sucking  babe  to  Thebes. 
Thebes  had  passed  her  heyday  and  was  be- 


224  THE    RUIXS, 

ginning  to  grow  old  before  Homer  was.  Yet 
after  Homer  had  lived  and  died,  and  all  the 
great  Greeks,  and  through  the  days  of  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  and  even  after  that,  the 
wonders  of  Thebes  were  still  accumulating 
from  year  to  year.  From  the  twenty -fifth 
century  before  Christ  down  to  the  fourth, 
Thebes  was  embellishing  itself  with  fresh 
wonders  perpetually. 

To-day  it  is  quite  deruinate,  tumbled  down 
and  knocked  to  pieces,  scraped  to  powder  and 
r  stifled  in  sand.  Yet  it  is  so  huge  in  its  over- 
throw, so  grandly  and  yet  pathetically  in- 
destructible, that  you  leave  it  dazed  and 
stupid.  The  mind  will  not  take  it  all  in. 
If  it  were  standing  complete  you  might  pos- 
sibly grasp  the  plan  of  it  for  all  its  vastness. 
As  it  is,  the  tiling  baffles  and  eludes  you. 
Here,  you  cannot  but  see,  was  one  of  the 
greatest  marvels  of  the  world — yet  you  can 
never  know  wliat  it  was  like.  You  can  see 
the  parts  of  it,  but  you  can  never,  never 
attain  to  any  conception  of  the  whole.  Other 
ruins  never  afflicted    me   with    any  sense  of 


LUXOR.  225 

loss.      They   are   ruined,   and  there's  an   end 
of  it  :  probably  they  look  much  better  as  they    / 
are.      But    the    ruins    of  Thebes    are   almost  i 
trao^ic  in  their  sug-g-estion  that  somethinfj  is 
lost  that  can  never  be  recovered.     They  seem 
struggling  to  tell  you  some  great  secret,  and  ' 
they  are  doomed  to  dumbness  for  ever. 

So  that  I  cannot  give  you  any  idea  of  the 
ruins  in  and  about  Luxor :  I  have  none  for 
myself.  I  have  only  a  string  of  single  re- 
collections :  you  must  be  content  if  I  unwind 
you  that. 

When  the  boat  pulls  up  at  Luxor  the  land-") 
ing-stage  appeared  to  be  a    colossal    temple.  ( 
Really  this  is  across  the  road,  but,  even  so,^ 
it    was   wonder    enough.      Arcades    of   huge  ^ 
pillars,    some    complete,    some    half    broken 
down,  some  sprawling  in  hideous  dislocation 
— they  loomed  grey  and  motionless  and  solemn 
in  face  of  the  ancient  river  and  the  flaming! 
sunset.      The   dust   and   filthiness   of   Luxor 
village  clustered  round  them  and  half-covered 
them  ;   the  donkey-boys  and  beggars  bawled 
before  them ;   they  stood  still  and  soundless, 

P 


226  THE   RUINS. 

jheeding  nothing  of  it.  As  we  went  to  bed 
'almost  under  them  they  seemed  to  be  rebuk- 
ing squalid,  modern  Egypt — rebuking  modern- 
ity altogether,  that  was  so  small  and  fretting, 
\while  they  remained  so  great  and  unsurprised. 
February  9. — To-day  it  was  a  long  canter 
on  the  other  side  of  the  river  to  the  tombs  of 
the  old  kings.  The  serpent  of  donkeys  wound 
up  a  long  valley,  rock-cored,  but  half  silted 
up  with  sand,  and  crunching  with  loose  stones. 
A  cluster  of  Arabs,  blue  and  black  in  their 
galabeahs,  and  touched  with  the  white  of 
their  turbans,  showed  that  we  had  arrived. 
And  there,  in  the  face  of  the  rock  walls,  one, 
two,  three — a  dozen  and  more — were  little 
square  holes  of  about  the  height  of  a  man. 
They  are  closed  in  with  iron  gates  now,  for 
the  Egyptian  Government  supports  its  monu- 
ments by  selling  tickets  to  view  them  ;  but  as 
you  go  through,  that  is  the  last  liint  of  to-day. 
You  are  going  down  a  slope,  then  down  a 
flight  of  broken  stone  steps,  and  it  is  time 
to  light  your  candle.  You  come  into  a  small 
square  chamber — all  hewn  out  of  the   naked 


THE    TOMB    OF    PHARAOH.  227 

rock,  but  cut  all  over  with  hieroglyphics  and 
rude  pictures  of  outlandish  men  and  mon- 
strous-headed gods.  You  hold  up  your  candle 
to  them ;  here  looks  out  the  head  of  a  hawk, 
there  of  a  cat,  there  of  a  man  or  woman  almost 
as  grotesque  as  they.  You  can  still  see  faintly 
upon  them  the  blue  and  yellow  and  vermilion 
with  which  they  once  shone — shone  for  no 
eye  to  look  upon. 

Lower   down,    by   more   broken   staircases, 
blind  with  darkness  and   choked  with  dust, 
you  will  come  to  the  sleeping  chamber  of  the 
dead  Pharaoh.     The  bat  that  rushes  whirrino; 
out  as  you  go  in  might  be  his  soul,  shy  and 
indignant  that  after  these  thousands  of  years 
of  rest  his  home  has  been   broken  open  and 
has   echoed   to  voices.      There   Is    his   sarco- 
phagus—  that   great   hollow    mass    of   black 
granite.     The  lid  —  It  must  weigh  tons  upoUj 
tons  of  itself — is  split  asunder  :   the  mummy' 
Is  gone — stolen  and  sold  for  a  rich  man's  fad, 
or  taken   away  for   schoolgirls    to   giggle   at  / 
in  a  museum.     The  tomb,  which  was  sealed! 
up  so   well   that  when  it  was   opened   they 


228  THE    RUINS. 

found  footprints  thirty-three  centuries  old  as 
clear  printed  as  those  of  last  minute,  is  left 
empty  and  desolate.  I  suppose  that  while 
there  exists  a  demand  for  mummies  political 
economy  will  not  be  satisfied  without  a  supply. 
But  it  does  seem  hard  upon  King  Seti  that 
they  have  taken  away  his  poor  shrivelled 
body  and  hollow- socketed  head  for  people  to 
pay  at  the  door  to  look  at.  He  kept  his 
secret  so  well  and  so  long,  and  he  was  so 
horribly  afraid  lest  he  should  be  disturbed. 
Better  if  he  could  have  rested  for  ever,  un- 
known of,  unrecked  of,  in  the  silent  heart  of 
his  mountain. 

February  10. — These  things,  however,  are 
only  the  setting  :  the  jewel  of  Luxor  is 
Karnak.  I  saw  it  first  by  moonlight.  Along 
the  dim,  dusty  road  you  suddenly  come  on 
a  tall  pylon  —  a  square  gateway,  inclining 
slightly  towards  the  top,  narrow  for  its  great 
height.  Then  Karnak  begins.  Soon  you  are 
in  an  avenue  of  couchant  sphinxes,  defaced 
lion  heads,  ghostly  in  the  white  light.  In 
front  of  you  tower  what  look  like  two  fort- 


KARNAK.  229 

resses,  two  mountains  of  masonry.  They  are 
so  huge  that  you  at  first  mistake  them  for 
real  hills  ;  yet  they  are  only  another  gateway. 
Pass  that  and  you  are  in  a  court  littered  with 
broken  shafts  and  beheaded  pedestals,  frag- 
ments of  fallen  columns,  and  limbs  of  statues 
as  tall.  On  your  right  gleams  doubtfully  a 
smaller  temple  :  two  huge  statues  guard  it 
at  the  entry  :  within,  to  right  and  left,  stand 
others,  handless,  headless,  shivered  to  the 
waist ;  of  some  nothing  remains  but  a  pair 
of  prodigious  shapeless  feet  thrust  forward 
out  of  nothing. 

But  keep  along  the  central  aisle.  Now  you 
are  in  the  great  hall,  standing  like  an  ant 
between  rows  on  rows  of  giant  columns 
Those  at  the  back  are  half  hidden  in  rubble 
that  climbs  to  where  the  roof  was  ;  the  near- 
est stand  free,  and  it  takes  ten  people's  arms 
to  encircle  one  of  them.  You  stand  abashed  j 
beneath  them  ;  wherever  you  look  more  tre- 
mendous pillars  press  in  upon  you ;  the  blue- 
blacked,  star -pierced  heaven  is  only  a  little 
slit  far,  far  above  you.     You  are  almost  glad 


230  THE    RUINS. 

to  escape  from  the  impression  of  their  majesty, 
and  be  out  again  in  the  moonhght  you  are 
accustomed  to.  Now  before  you  rises  an 
obehsk,  a  sHght  shaft  flying  up  to  bathe  its 
point  in  the  moonhght ;  the  night  is  so  still 
and  clear  that  you  can  see  the  compasses  and 
boats  and  owls  that  are  carved  on  it.  And 
beside  it  you  have  to  walk  round  a  block 
of  stone  the  size  of  a  cottage — that  is  but 
one  splinter  of  the  fallen  sister  that  once 
stood  head  to  head  with  it. 

That  is  the  last  individual  ruin  I  remember. 
By  now  it  was  a  jungle  of  stone  to  me — blue, 
light,  and  black  shadow,  checkered  and  inter- 
twined in  every  kind  of  fantastic  impossibility. 
It  was  not  an  impression,  it  was  not  an  effect : 
it  was  sheer  bewilderment.  Here  was  a 
slumbering  sphinx,  and  there  the  stump 
where  a  sphinx  had  been  ;  there  a  huge 
pillar,  that  had  lost  itself ;  there  a  temple 
with  its  stone  roof  hanging  down  in  rags 
inside  it ;  a  headless  body  above  you  totter- 
ing against  a  pictured  wall ;  a  bodiless  head 
below  you,  filling  a  large  pit  by  itself,  gasping 


MEMNON.  231 

up  at  the  vault  of  heaven  ;  then  a  sudden 
circle  of  monkey -heads  on  low  pedestals, 
grinning  at  each  other  by  the  pale  moonlight. 
Finally,  the  whole  destruction  seen  from  the 
loftiest  pylon  :  a  tossing  sea  of  stone — shapes 
leaping  up  in  struggle,  shapes  bowed  down  in 
despair,  shapes  tangled,  gnarled,  and  writhed 
together  or  apart ;  around  them  the  eternal 
desert,  above  them  the  everlasting  sky,  all 
dead  silent — a  prodigy  of  unutterable  collapse. 
February  11. — For  the  last  of  Luxor  we 
will  take  something  less  stupendous,  some- 
thing simpler  and  therefore  more  pathetic. 
Cross  the  Nile  and  ride  half  an  hour  through 
the  sugar-cane  stumps  and  the  clover.  There 
rise  up  suddenly  the  twin  colossi  of  Memnon. 
At  their  feet  tiny  Arabs  bustle  and  bellow ; 
beside  them  tiny  oxen  tug  at  a  creaking 
wheel.  They  sit  with  their  immense  hands 
resting  meekly  on  their  knees,  their  sightless 
eyes  turned  searchingly  towards  the  new 
risen  sun.  The  ancients  fabled  that  when  the 
first  ray  of  morning  struck  Memnon  he  gave 
out  a  bell  -  like  clang  in    answer.      But   the 


232 


THE    RUINS. 


joyous  sun  strikes  him  and  his  mate,  and 
they  are  silent ;  it  burns  on  them,  and  they 
are  cold ;  it  marches  up  before  their  eyes,  and 
they  do  not  see.  Worn  and  battered,  patient, 
vast,  and  so  very  old,  they  reproach  the  all- 
seeing  sun  with  their  bleared,  blind  eyes : 
they  seem  to  be  asking  him  what  has  become 
of  them  and  theirs  that  were  once  so  glorious, 
of  their  shivered  homes,  and  their  mute,  irre- 
coverable companions. 


TTie  sphinx. 


233 


XXI 

THE   DAHABEAH. 

ASSOUAN — AN    ARAB    BARD— LIFE    ON    A    DAHABEAH — HOW    THE 
NATIVES   CELEBRATE  A   "FANTASIA." 

February  12. — Assouan  is  the  southern  fron- 
tier of  Egypt,  the  terminus  of  the  Lower  Nile. 
And  it  looks  like  a  terminus.  We  came  to  it 
on  a  lazy  afternoon,  too  late  for  coffee,  too 
early  for  tea.  The  Nile,  which  had  been 
lazy  too,  began  to  show  signs  of  a  current. 
"We  tied  up  by  a  bank  of  yellow  sand  :  in 
front  of  us,  to  the  left,  was  a  long  line  of 
palms  with  white  houses  j)eeping  from  behind 
them  —  Assouan.  Beyond  it  a  lofty  rise  of 
rock — at  least,  it  looks  lofty  in  Egypt — met 
the  elevation  of  a  rocky,  tree-grown  island — 
Elephantine.  Between  the  two  came  down 
the   river,    still   fretting   from    the    Cataract. 


234  THE    DAHABEAH. 

It  narrowed  between  the  two  elbows  of  rock, 
and  turned  a  corner,  so  that  it  looked  as  if 
Assouan  were  not  only  the  end  of  Egypt, 
but  the  end  of  the  Nile. 

In  a  quarter  of  an  hour  I  was  In  a  boat, 
amid  my  packages,  pulling  away  up-stream 
for  my  friend's  dahabeah.  Lucky  are  the 
friends  of  my  friend,  for  there  is  no  corner 
of  the  world  where  you  may  not  meet  him, 
and  his  welcome  always  gives  you  to  believe 
he  came  to  this  particular  corner  expressly  to 
meet  you.  Now  I  was  to  live  a  couple  of 
niglits  aboard  his  dahabeah.  I  had  seen  the 
sort  of  comfort  in  which  Mr  Cook  will  send 
you  up  the  Nile  in  a  party ;  now  for  the 
luxury  when  he  gives  you  a  dahabeah  to 
yourself. 

The  six  leather-skin  rowers  took  hold  of 
their  clumsy  oars,  one  liand  like  a  cap  over 
the  butt,  swung  them  out  by  the  loop-of-rope 
rowlocks,  and  bent  forward.  As  the  oars  took 
the  water  a  seventh  leather-skin,  squatting 
idle  in  the  bows,  suddenly  set  up  a  nasal 
wail.     I  knew  it  at  once — Arab  singing ;  but 


A   RIVER    VOCALIST.  235 

to  my  horror  the  whole  crew  joined  in  full- 
throated.  For  half-a-dozen  strokes  they 
howled,  and  then  set  up  one  strident  stac- 
cato "  a-a-ah  ! "  which  is  the  cry  they  use  in 
this  country  to  remind  shirking  camels  and 
donkeys  of  their  duty.  Then  for  another  six 
strokes  they  howled ;  then  a-a-ah-d  again  to 
keep  themselves  up  to  their  work.  All  the 
time  the  idler  in  the  bows  kept  whining  and 
grunting  with  a  kind  of  modest  enthusiasm. 
Well  he  might,  for  he  was  the  musician  of  the 
crew.  The  Arab  sailor  won't  take  the  river 
without  a  bard  to  soothe  and  stimulate  him  as 
he  rows.  He  can't  do  without  him.  I  could. 
So  we  slowly  furrowed  up  the  water,  danc- 
ing golden  in  the  sloping  sun,  till  we  came 
under  the  leftward  shore  of  Elephantine. 
And  there — where  was  I  ?  At  Henley  or  in 
Oxford  for  the  Eights  ?  For  there  lay  moored 
a  row  of  half-a-dozen  white-painted  houseboats 
— houseboats,  if  you  please,  at  the  far-end  of 
Egypt,  eight  hundred  miles  from  the  sea. 
But  on  examination  they  were  not  exactly 
like  houseboats  either.      The  after-part  was 


236  THE    DAHABEAH. 

like  it,  with  many  windows  and  awning, 
cushions,  and  lounge  chairs ;  forward  the 
boats  were  low  in  the  water  and  sharp-nosed, 
as  if  built  for  sailing.  They  carried  a  mast 
and  the  yard  of  an  enormous  lateen  sail  that 
looked  as  if  it  were  balanced  on  top  of  the 
mast,  and  sloped  upwards  from  just  above  the 
bow  till  it  hung  towering  almost  over  the 
uprising  stern. 

That  was  a  dahabeah — or,  rather,  just  half 
of  one.  For  this  was  a  sort  of  yacht  with 
auxiliary  steam  in  the  shape  of  a  tug  to 
tow  it  up  stream  when  winds  are  light  and 
current  contrary.  With  the  lateen  sail  and 
the  tug  together  you  can't  go  wrong  —  but 
for  the  moment,  what  had  I  to  do  with  the 
tuo;  ?  For  the  boat  had  come  alongside, 
fouling  the  proprietor's  fishing-line  in  its 
merry  Arab  way ;  in  a  minute  we  were 
aboard  and  in  the  saloon.  Many  people 
would  be  only  too  glad  to  have  that  saloon, 
lying  placidly  six  hundred  miles  from  the 
nearest  possible  upholsterer  and  decorator,  for 
their  drawing-room  at  home.     Fine  furniture, 


A    READY-MADE    HOME.  237 

books,  pictures,  piano — and  these  the  setting 
for  that  crowning  blessing  of  civilisation,  an 
English  lady.  Then  dinner,  with  everything 
that  the  Nile  can  furnish,  or  that  can  be 
persuaded  by  any  device  of  science  to  keep 
during  the  journey,  good  wine,  good  service, 
good  bed — and  not  a  minute's  trouble  to  the 
people  who  enjoy  it.  They  just  order  a 
dahabeah  —  and  the  dahabeah  is  there, 
equipped  down  to  the  last  table-napkin. 
That  means  a  complete  holiday — a  real  holi- 
day. Just  as  you  get  a  ready-made  hotel  in 
the  Nile  steamer,  so  in  the  dahabeah  you  get 
a  ready-made  home. 

February  13. — The  sun  of  Assouan  has  only 
been  up  half  an  hour  by  seven  at  this  time 
of  year,  but  already  it  is  hot  on  your  cheek. 
It  is  a  stimulating  sun,  though,  as  yet,  and 
not  a  deadening  one  ;  it  wants  only  half  an 
hour  to  stir  all  Egypt  into  laughing  life. 
But  when  I  went  out  at  seven  the  crew  of 
the  dahabeah  were  limp  and  listless.  I  asked 
one  of  them  how  he  was  feeling.  The  grin  is 
always  on  the  lips  of  the  Egyptian,  and  it 


238  THE    D  AH  ABE  AH. 

broke  out  right  enough,  only  with  it  came 
a  groan.  "  Fantasia,"  he  moaned,  and  tapped 
his  forehead — "  fantasia." 

I  don't  wonder  :  for  last  night  was  a 
fantasia  indeed.  It  is  the  custom  of  the 
dahabeah  hands — dating,  presumably,  from 
the  days  when  a  voyage  up  the  Nile  was  a 
thing  of  difficulty  and  danger — to  ask  their 
patron  on  arrival  at  Assouan  for  a  sheep 
wherewith  to  make  merry.  Some  give  it 
and  some  do  not ;  but  if  I  could  only  hope 
to  write  down  the  result  of  that  sheep  one- 
tenth  as  funny  as  it  was,  you  would  agree 
that  a  whole  sheep  -  run  has  often  brought 
in  less  enjoyment.  There  was  also  hasheesh 
and  brandy  —  they  called  it  brandy  —  and, 
perhaps,  they  too  are  not  without  their 
share  of  credit  for  the  entertainment. 

We  were  peacefully  dining  when  the  first 
discordant  yell  surged  in  through  the  glass 
doors.  The  fantasia  has  begun,  we  merely 
said ;  and  not  till  we  went  out  to  sit  on 
the  upper  deck  did  we  realise  what  a  fan- 
tasia  of  fantasias   was    this.      As   we    came 


THE    CARNIVAL   BEGINS.  239 

aboard  I  had  noticed  that  the  ship  was  all 
trimmed  with  lanterns  ;  now  they  were  all 
blazing.  White  and  green,  red  and  blue, 
they  traced  out  the  lines  of  the  upper 
deck,  the  stanchions  of  the  awning,  and 
climbed  to  the  masthead.  By  their  half 
light  you  could  divine  that  the  boat  was 
also  wreathed  with  feathery  sugar  -  canes. 
On  a  little  flat  rock  a  boat's  length  or  two 
out  in  the  stream  blazed  a  joyous  tar- barrel. 
But  that  was  all  nothing.  With  one  simul- 
taneous wild  shriek  we  all  seized  on  the 
nearest  support  and  tried  to  hold  ourselves 
upright  while  we  laughed  at  the  crew. 

They  were  all  crowded  into  the  low  fore- 
part of  the  dahabeah,  but  at  first  we  could 
hardly  see  them  for  the  noise.  There  must 
have  been  at  least  one  hundred  of  them 
packed  in  there,  and  from  every  nose  issued 
skirling  indescribable.  It  kept  time,  and 
kept  a  kind  of  tune  —  kept  it  only  too 
faithfully,  for  it  repeated  itself  every  other 
bar.  They  were  not  all  singing,  for  it  seems 
that   not   all    Arabs    can   make  the  noise  to 


240  THE    DAHABEAH. 

their  own  satisfaction ;  a  double  row  of 
grave,  black  -  hooded  figures  at  either  bul- 
wark merely  surveyed  the  scene  with  solemn 
enthusiasm. 

But  all  the  rest  gave  forth  grunts,  and 
groans,  and  wails,  and  screeches  fit  to  wake 
the  dead  and  kill  the  living.  It  had  time, 
as  I  say,  and  a  kind  of  tune,  and  its  qual- 
ity of  sound  is  best  described  as  the  voice 
of  a  camel  crossed  on  a  bagpipe.  That  was 
the  outer  ring ;  inside  was  a  double  row 
of  musicians  and  the  dancers.  There  were 
only  two  instruments  at  first — the  water- 
jar,  which  is  slung  on  the  performer  and 
slapped  on  the  bottom  like  a  tom-tom;  and 
a  pair  of  tiny,  tiny  wooden  drums,  one  the 
shape  and  size  of  a  breakfast-cup,  the  other 
of  a  tea  -  cup.  An  old  man  played  them : 
he  was  not  smiling  like  the  others,  but 
very  grave ;  he  did  not  even  look  at  the 
dancers,  —  he  just  tap  -  tapped  away  at  his 
baby  drums.  Nobody  could  possibly  hear 
their  little  patter  in  that  ear  -  achy  jangle ; 
but  what  was  that  to  him  ?     He  just  tapped 


THE   FANTASIA    OF   THE    SEASON,  241 

on.  The  breakfast  -  cup  rolled  over  ex- 
hausted ;  he  carefully  helped  it  up,  and 
tapped  it  some  more.  A  dancer  galumph- 
ing down  the  line  kicked  over  the  tea -cup; 
he  crawled  after  it,  methodically  put  it  in 
place,  and  tapped  it  again. 

Fiercest  Bacchanals  of  all  were  the  dancers. 
From  two  to  six  swayed  up  and  down  the 
line  intermittently — now  moving  slowly,  now 
prancing  with  emphasis,  now  banging  their 
feet  down  on  deck  in  a  fury  of  enjoyment. 
One  especially  I  had  noticed  as  a  singularly 
languid  and  incompetent  oar  in  the  day ; 
how  different  now  !  Now  his  turban,  with 
a  bit  of  sugar  -  cane  stuck  through  it,  was 
down  over  his  left  eye  ;  from  the  left  corner 
of  his  mouth  there  shot  up  to  meet  it  a 
dead  cigarette-stump  in  a  holder.  His  eyes 
now  lit  with  delight,  now  quenched  with 
drunkenness.  Every  limb  and  every  gesture 
spelt  a  mixture  of  insane  fury  and  imbecile 
good-fellowship.  Now  he  seized  a  water- 
bottle  and  slung  it  on,  tom-tommed  up  and 
down,   reeled   as  he    kicked    his   legs   abroad 


242  THE    DAHABEAH. 

and  brought  them  down  slap,  slap  on  the 
deck.  Now  he  was  a  mixture  between  a 
mad  bull  and  a  marionette.  Then  suddenly 
tliere  appeared  in  the  ring — whence  and 
how  he  got  there  nobody  knew  or  cared — a 
white  -  haired,  jet  -  black  old  man,  a  feather 
dust  -  brush  stuck  through  his  turban,  play- 
ing a  lyre.  Of  course  you  couldn't  hear  it, 
but  plainly  he  was  playing.  A  shriek  of 
ecstasy  greeted  him.  He  moved  his  stiff 
limbs  in  a  desperate  dithyramb,  and  beamed 
all  over  with  dirt  and  delirium. 

There  were  one  hundred  and  tw^enty 
guests,  and  they  consumed  between  them 
only  four  bottles  of  brandy  and  eighteen 
pennyworth  of  hasheesh.  Yet  it  was  uni- 
versally agreed  to  be  the  fantasia  of  the 
season.  The  noise  ceased  before  midnight, 
but  hours  after  we  went  to  bed  we  could 
hear  a  crunch,  crunch  overhead  as  they 
chewed  at  sugar  -  cane.  The  crew  were  eat- 
inof  the  decorations. 


243 


XXII. 

THE   ANCIENT   EGYPTIANS. 

ANCIENT  EGYPTIAN  ART — RAMESES   THE   GREAT — CHARACTER  Of 
THE   PEOPLE — A  NATION   OP  MONUMENTAL  MASONS. 

February  14. — If  a  modern  child  were  to 
draw  on  Its  slate  the  masterpieces  of  ancient 
Egyptian  art,  it  would  be  smacked.  The 
form  of  the  buildings,  its  careful  parent  would 
point  out,  is  uncouth  and  clumsy,  and  the 
figures  quite  hopelessly  out  of  drawing.  The 
men  look  like  wooden  dolls,  and  the  women 
like  those  india-rubber  things  that  you  punch 
because  they  have  a  whistle  at  the  back. 

When  you  point  out  these  fairly  obvious 
facts  to  the  Nile  pilgrim,  he  —  it  is  more 
usually  she — at  first  catches  her  breath.  An- 
cient Egyptian  art  not  beautiful !  Oh,  Mr 
Steevens ! 


244  THE    ANCIENT   EGYPTIANS. 

But  when  you  gently  lead  her  up  to 
Rameses  or  Cleopatra,  and  compel  her  to 
look  at  them  as  she  would  look  at  any  other 
carving  on  any  other  wall,  then  she  is  com- 
pelled to  allow  that  the  thing  is  a  grotesque 
abortion.  "  Oh,  but  you  forget,"  she  says 
then,  "how  very  old  it  is:  you  can't  expect 
much  from  that  age." 

When  you  urge  that  plea  you  give  Egyptian 
art  away  at  once  :  you  are  beginning  to  excuse 
it  as  the  work,  not  of  people  whose  civilisation 
might  set  us  blushing  for  our  own,  but  as 
primitive  barbarians  who  knew  no  better. 
But  the  queer  thing  is  that  a  great  many  of 
the  most  admired  masterpieces  are  not  so 
very  old  after  all.  The  temples  of  Denderah, 
Esneh,  and  Edfu  were  none  of  them  completed 
much  before  the  Christian  era  ;  some  consid- 
erably later.  That  means  that  they  are  more 
than  four  hundred  years  younger  than  the 
Parthenon — which  was  itself  the  youngest  of 
the  great  Greek  temples.  And  the  rude  cari- 
cature of  Cleopatra  on  the  back  of  Denderah 
was  scratched  there  many  generations  after 


A   BARBAROUS    RACE.  245 

the  Venus  of  Milo.  Not  only,  It  follows,  had 
the  ancient  Egyptians  no  art  in  themselves, 
but  they  were  incapable  of  learning  better 
from  those  who  had. 

The  truth  is  that  the   ancient  Egyptians 
were,  and  remained,  barbarians.     The  civilised 
idea  of  producing  fine  art  is  to  make  it  beauti- 
ful: the  barbarous  idea  is  to  make  it  large. 
Civilised  art  seeks  unity ;  barbarous  art  re- 
duplication.    Kameses  the  Great  thought  he 
was  sure  to  make  himself  impressive   if  he 
only  put  up    his   statues   large   enough   and 
enough  of  them  in  one  row  :  he  only  succeeded 
in   making   himself  ridiculous.      In   a   single 
temple  he  had  forty  colossi  of  himself,  and 
he  added  figures  of  his  queen  standing  about 
as  high  as  his  knee  ;    with   the  result  that 
even  worshipping  Chicago  forgets  itself  for  a 
moment  to  laugh   at  him.     He  thought  we 
should    respect   him   if   he   pictured    himself 
thrashing  hundreds  of  similar  captives  with 
two  similar  cats-o'-nine-tails  brandished  by  two 
eimilar  right  arms :   we  only  feel  he  was  no 
sportsman.     Poor  Eameses  the  Great ! 


246  THE    ANCIENT    EGYPTIANS. 

So  with  their  architecture.  A  cIviHsed 
nation,  such  as  the  Greeks  were  in  matters 
of  art,  makes  a  series  of  pillars  all  alike  :  the 
aim  is  one  single  effect.  The  barbarous 
Egyptians — though  they  were  actually  ruled 
by  Greek  kings  at  the  time — made  every 
capital  different,  and  destroyed  the  unity  of 
effect  at  once  :  you  cannot  see  the  temple  for 
looking  at  the  capitals.  To  put  it  very  plainly, 
the  lion  -  head  railing-  outside  the  British 
Museum,  which  the  authorities  smilingly 
spudded  up  to  give  the  babies  and  babus 
of  Bloom sbury  more  pavement,  was  more 
beautiful  tlian  all  the  monuments  of  ancient 
Egypt  put  together. 

Then,  why  pay  a  pound  and  sixpence  far- 
thing to  visit  them,  you  cry  ?  But  not  so 
fast.  The  pictures  in  the  Royal  Academy 
are  not  beautiful ;  yet  you  rightly  pay  money 
to  see  them.  Just  so  the  monuments  of 
Egypt  are  worth  seeing;  they  are  so  large, 
so  elaborate,  so  informative,  so  old.  The 
ancient  Egyptians  were  not  a  glad  or  lunn- 
orous    people.      They    took    everything    very 


A    MONSTER    OBELISK.  247 

seriously,  including  themselves.  That  is  their 
great  secret  :  they  took  themselves  very,  very 
seriously.  Nine  times  in  ten  this  made  them 
ridiculous ;  the  tenth,  it  made  them  subhme. 

Was  a  temple  to  be  built  ?  It  should  be 
the  hugest  on  record,  and  no  ex[)ense  nor 
la.bour  (other  people's  labour,  of  course)  was 
more  than  the  occasion  was  worth.  The 
temple  may  be  hideous  when  you  see  it ; 
there  remains  the  prodigy,  that  it  should 
exist  at  all.  It  is  not  the  lines  of  the 
building  and  the  carvings  that  are  worth 
coming  hundreds  of  miles  to  see  :  it  is  the 
tantalising  wonder  how  the  devil  they  got 
there.  I  saw  in  the  old  quarries  at  Assouan 
yesterday  an  obelisk  half  cut  out,  but  in- 
complete, and  never  carried  away.  The 
sand  has  blown  up  over  it,  and  only  a  little 
bit  of  one  surface  is  left  uncovered,  but 
what  remains  is  big  enough  to  make  a 
cricket  pitch  on.  The  astounding  thing 
about  these  gigantic  works  is  that  nobody 
has  ever  found  the  tools  with  which  they 
were    made  ;    therefore    people     believe     the 


248  THE    ANCIENT    EGYPTIANS. 

stone  was  split  by  driving  in  wet  wooden 
wedges,  and  letting  tliem  swell.  Certainly 
there  are  smooth  rock  faces  in  the  quarries 
with  square  marks  very  like  a  row  of 
wedges.  But  whatever  it  was  done  with, 
it  is  very  clear  that  men  with  ambition  to 
plan,  with  energy  and  patience  to  carry 
through,  works  of  such  weight  and  difficulty, 
were  no  common  barbarians  after  all. 

And  then  there  is  the  age  of  it — for  when 
\  it  is  really  old,  how  immemorially  old  it  is ! 

1  Until   you    come    to    Egypt   you    have    gone 
about    calling    chits    of    things    like    West- 

1  minster  Abbey  and  the   Elgin    Marbles   and 

\Stonehenge    old.       In    Egypt   you    begin   to 
understand   what   o-l-d   spells.     We    talk   of 

/ancient  Greece,  but  Egypt  had  got  through 
twenty  dynasties  —  not  twenty  kings,  but 
twenty  dynasties  —  before  ancient  Greece 
began  at  all.  It  had  nearly  finished  its 
[independent  history  before  Romulus  was 
born.  Ancient  Egypt  was  all  over  and 
done     with     centuries     before     Westminster 


MECHANICAL    SKILL.  249 

Abbey  was  dreamed  of.  There  were  old 
cities  in  the  Euphrates  valley — perhaps  older 
than  Egypt ;  that  is  more  than  seven  thou- 
sand years  old,  at  least  —  but  they  have 
left  no  record  of  themselves.  To-day  the 
monuments  of  Egypt  are  the  only  really  | 
ancient  remains  in  the  world.  \ 

And  what  manner  of  people  were  they, 
these  great-uncles  of  humanity  ?  It  is  not 
their  fault  if  we  do  not  know  all  about 
them.  Above  all  things  they  strove  for  | 
immortality,  and  if  the  bridging  of  fifty  to 
seventy  centuries  is  near  enough  for  them, 
they  ought  to  chuckle  in  their  mummy-cases  i 
at  their  success.  They  have  bequeathed  to  ; 
us  not  only  their  own  bodies,  but  also  their 
whole  daily  life,  scraped  on  stone.  And 
though  artistically  they  are  barbarians, 
mechanically  they  had  attained  an  astound-, 
ingly  high  industrial  skill.  In  the  realm 
of  mechanical  civilisation  they  probably  knew 
everything  the  world  knew  up  to  a  hundred 
years  ago,   except  printing,   gunpowder,   and 


250  THE    ANCIENT    EGYPTIANS. 

''  the  compass.  On  the  top  of  this  they  pro- 
bably  had  many  small  devices  which  the 
world  now  would  gladly  recover  and  cannot. 
In  the  earliest  days,  if  I  may  judge  from 
their  own  monuments,  the  Egyptians  were 
of  a  rich  umber  colour,  well  made  in  chest 
and  arms,  but  falling  away  below  the  waist ; 
their  costume  was  a  simple  white  petticoat 
to  the  knee.  Their  wives  were  yellow  ochre 
in  colour,  and  wore  nothing  at  all.  Their 
faces  give  the  imjDression  of  having  been 
flattened  with  butter  patters  applied  on  the 
scalp  and  under  the  chin.  Their  expression 
is  mild  and  contemplative  :  in  that  of 
Eameses  the  Great  there  is  a  trace  of  pawki- 
\  ness  ;  he  must  have  been  a  chubby  little 
fellow,  and  looks  rather  like  a  good-tempered 
baby  in  a  false  beard. 

As  for  their   life,   it   was    like   enough    to 

that  of  Egypt  to-day.     They  were  much  on 

the    Nile,   fishing,    in   boats   hardly   different 

;  from    the   native  dahabeah ;    they    irrigated ; 

they  grew  grain,  and  all  kinds  of  vegetables. 


PREPARATIONS    FOR   DEATH.  251 

In  war  they  were  a  scourge  to  their  neigh-  i 
hours — at  Last,  they  say  they  were ;  natur- 
ally, they  put  up  no  monument  when   their  \ 
neighbours  scourged  them.     They  appear  to    ■ 
have  held   their   wives   In   small    estimation,    / 
and  their  slaves  in  none. 

But  why  pretend  to  talk  of  the  life  of  the  / 
ancient  Egyptians  ?      They   took   no  interest ! 
in  life  at  all,   but  set  their  constant  minds  ^ 
only  on  death.     They  considered  their  houses  ' 
as  lodgings,  says  Herodotus  finely,  and  their  1 
tombs  as  their  real  homes.     If  anybody  ever  | 
lived  _  to   die,    they    did.       Only    two   things  I 
were   Important   to   them  —  the    welfare    of 
their  souls,  and  the  solidity  of  their  monu-  I 
ments.      They  never  seem  to  have  built  any- 
thing but  temples  to  the  one  end,  and  tombs 
to  the  other.     Their  popular   literature   was 
a  work  called  the  '  Book  of  the  Dead.'     They  , 
were  so  busy  preparing  to  die  that  they  can  j 
hardly  have  had  any  time  to  live.     When- 
ever they  met  and  talked  together — if  they 
ever   did  —  I    am   sure   they  never  laughed, 


252  THE    ANCIENT    EGYPTIANS. 

but  spoke  in  low  voices  about  the  splendid 
time  they  meant  to  have  when  they  were 
buried.  Ancient  Egypt  was  one  great  pre- 
paratory school  for  the  cemetery — a  nation 
of  monumental  masons. 


253 


XXIII. 

THROUGH   NUBIA. 

THE  FIRST  CATARACT — PHIL.E — NUBIA — THE  NATIVE  TELEGRAPH 
— SUNRISE   FROM   KOROSKO — ABU   SIMBEL — WADY   HALFA. 

February  15. — A  dusty,  ramshackle,  seven- 
mile  railway  took  us  round  the  cataract  from 
Assouan  to  Shellal.  There  lay  Cook's  steamer, 
Prince  Abbas,  which  plies  between  the  first 
and  second  cataracts.  Our  bank  of  the  river 
was  streets  of  piled-up  boxes  of  bully  beef 
and  sacks  of  flour ;  up  and  down  them,  brick- 
red  monocle  in  his  eye,  his  legs  in  khaki 
trousers,  so  stout  and  dusty  that  they  looked 
like  corduroy,  walked  the  same  little  subal- 
tern whose  cabin  I  shared  when  first  I  came 
out  in  December.  The  round  peg  had  dropped 
straight  into  the  round  hole  ;  he  walked  and 
watched  and  gave  his  orders,  energetic,  ready, 


254 


THROUGH    NUBIA. 


and  resourceful,  with  no  theory,  but  any 
amount  of  practice — a  pocket  edition  of  the 
British  Empire. 

On  the  opposite  bank,  as  if  to  reproach  the 
strenuous  Empire  of  to-day,  rose  up  the  ghost 
of  the   Empire  of  the  past.      The  tall  brown 


Island  of  PhiltE  in  Ike  Mile,  above  Assotiin. 

gateway  of  Philae  temple  upreared  itself  mas- 
sively in  face  of  us ;  among  rocks  and  trees 
to  right  and  left  of  it  peeped  out  the  shame- 
faced relics  of  walls  and  colonnades.  The  pil- 
grims from  the  Rameses  the  Great  were  being 


TJNHAR VESTED    SAND.  255 

ferried  across  to  inspect  the  ruins.  Sorrow- 
fully I  had  waved  my  hat  at  each  several  one 
of  them — except  Jack,  who  with  the  ingrati- 
tude of  his  age  and  sex  had  already  forgotten 
his  intimate  friend,  and  was  busy  failing  to 
make  a  cat's  cradle.  Now  they  struggled  up 
a  little  hill  and  began  to  spread  out  over  the 
island.  I  thought  I  heard  the  distant  boom 
of  Mohammed's  "dees  way-y-y."  I  realised 
how  ridiculous  we  must  have  looked  when  we 
went  ashore  together — and  also  how  very 
much  we  had  enjoyed  ourselves. 

Now  we  were  swinging  slowly  round  in 
the  narrow,  shallow  stream ;  now  we  were 
steaming  full  up  river  through  Nubia.  Nubia 
is  not  in  Egypt,  and  it  does  not  look  like  it. 
You  have  come  into  quite  a  new  country — 
golden  sand  instead  of  rich,  brown  soil,  purple 
rock  in  place  of  green.  Just  above  the  catar- 
act the  belt  of  cultivation — which  in  Egypt 
was  often  miles  and  miles  of  young  crops — 
vanishes  utterly.  Harsh  rocks  run  down  to 
the  water's  edge  ;  where  they  recede  it  is  only 
to  give  way  to  un harvested  sand. 


256  THROUGH   NUBIA. 

Later,  when  the  banks  flatten  again,  there 
is  a  little  cultivation,  but  very  little.  Now 
and  again  you  pass  a  row  of  water  -  hoists 
following  regularly  one  on  another.  These, 
by  the  way,  are  the  native  telegraph  of 
Egypt.  News  is  shouted  by  the  men  at  one 
to  the  men  at  the  next,  and  so  astoundingly 
fast  does  it  fly  that  the  death  of  the  last 
Khedive  was  known  thus  at  Assouan  as  soon 
as  by  the  wire.  But  the  line  of  them  is  a 
very  broken  one  through  Nubia ;  and  even 
where  you  see  them  the  crops  of  broad  beans 
and  lentil-lupins  are  the  narrowest  ribbon 
along  the  shore — hardly  broader  than  a  rail- 
way allotment  at  home.  The  country  has  its 
uncanny  beauty  ;  the  brilliancy  of  the  orange 
sand  takes  all  the  blue  out  of  the  sky,  and 
leaves  a  wonderful,  soft,  colourless  belt  along 
the  horizon  ;  but  its  beauty  is  the  beauty  of 
the  desert.  It  is  a  poor  land.  Villages  are 
scarce  and  lightly  peopled  ;  almost  the  whole 
population  of  Nubia  goes  forth  to  seek  its 
bread  in  house  and  stable  service  wherein 
Nubians  excel  all  Egyptians  for  honest  faith- 


MOUNT    KOROSKO.  257 

fulness.  Sometimes  you  land  at  a  little 
temple :  it  stands  by  itself  in  the  drifting 
sand ;  no  village  near,  and  hardly  a  wander- 
ing soul  to  ask  for  backsheesh.  The  very 
Nile  himself,  the  life-giver,  has  changed  his 
character.  Here  is  the  wonderful  sight  of  a 
great  river  flowing  through  a  parching  desert. 
Between  his  hard,  dry  banks  he  travels  pur- 
posely, glancing  neither  right  nor  left.  Some- 
how the  river  looks  preoccupied.  He  is  not 
a  native  here — he  is  a  passenger.  His  busi- 
ness lies  in  Egypt,  and  Nubia  he  pushes 
straight  through  unheeded. 

February  16. — "Ding  dong,  ding  dong,  at 
seven  o'clock  to-morrow,"  our  Mohammed 
used  to  remark,  when  duty  bade  him  an- 
nounce an  especially  irritatmg  early  start. 
On  this  upper  reach  it  appears  to  be  ding 
dong  at  five  every  morning.  This  morning 
it  was  the  ascent  of  the  holy  Mountain  of 
Korosko  in  order  to  see  the  sun  rise.  Why 
should  anybody  want  to  do  so  wild  a  thing? 
Everybody  who  has  been  obliged  to  see  sun- 
rises knows  that  as  a  rule  they  are  the  poor- 


2.'.8  TllllolUill    MT.IA. 

est  possible  performance,  and  that  clouds 
almost  invariably  rise  instead  of  the  sun. 
However,  the  enthusiasts  were  called  at  five, 
and  made  so  much  noise  about  it  that  I  got 
up  at  six  myself,  and  made  a  record-breaking 
ascent  of  the  heap  of  shale  they  call  a  moun- 
tain. At  the  top  you  find  the  stones,  whether 
fixed  or  lying  loose  about  the  place,  all 
scratched  over  with  Arabic — the  names  of 
pilgrims  who  have  come  to  the  shrine  of  the 
Korosko  saint. 

The  sun  then  rose. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  disappointment 
at  this,  as  it  had  been  widely  anticipated  that 
it  would  somehow  rise  differently  here  than 
anywhere  else.  There  still  remained,  how- 
ever, as  per  guide-book,  the  view  of  the  desert 
route  to  Khartoum.  Over  this  the  young 
ladies  pretended  to  be  enthusiastic,  but  here 
also  it  was  easy  to  see  that  they  had  expected 
something  more.  Though  what  it  was  I  can- 
not guess,  for  you  get  a  six-mile  view  of  the 
caravan  track  as  it  winds  in  and  out  the  bases 
of  the  rough  hills.     This  is  about  the  nearest 


RAILWAY   ROUTES.  259 

route  from  the  Nile  across  its  bend  to  Ahn 
Hamed  ;  it  is  the  old  camel  path,  and  ought 
in  theory  to  have  been  the  starting-point  of 
the  new  Sudan  Military  Eailway.  But  the 
rocks  made  that  impossible  within  the  given 
limits  of  time  and  money.  So  that  the  desert 
line  runs  from  Wady  Haifa  to  Abu  Hamed ; 
and  some  day,  when  the  time  comes  for  direct 
railway  communication  between  Cairo  and 
Khartoum,  the  line  may  be  built  from  As- 
souan—  not  to  Haifa,  but  across  the  desert 
to  join  the  S.M.K  as  it  nears  Abu  Hamed. 
Cairo-Assouan-Abu  Hamed-Berber-Metemneh- 
Khartoum,  or  else  Cairo  -  Assouan  -  Halfa- 
Dongola -Metemneh- Khartoum  ;  the  question 
appears  to  lie  between  these  two  routes,  for 
the  Sudan  will  hardly  carry  them  both.  The 
first  has  the  advantage  that  the  sections 
Cairo -Assouan  and  Abu  Hamed- Berber  will 
be  completed  this  year,  while  the  rails  and 
sleepers  of  the  Haifa- Abu  Hamed  line  could 
be  torn  up,  and  the  road  laid  backwards  from 
Abu  Hamed  to  Assouan. 

By  now  the  sun  has  got  up  to  some  pur- 


260  THROUGH    NUBIA. 

pose,  and  you  can  see  the  Nubian  Desert  and 
Nubia.  The  web  of  shining  gold  and  purple 
sand  and  rocks,  stretches  limitlessly  both  sides 
of  the  river.  And  just  below  you  is  the  little 
plot  of  Nubia — the  grey-brown  mud  huts  of 
Korosko,  hundreds  of  them  huddled  into  one 
small  village.  Beside  them  the  grateful  vivid- 
ness of  just  a  field  or  two  of  green  corn.  The 
Nile  is  nothing  but  a  sun-scaled  serpent  wind- 
ing over  the  desert ;  from  this  height  he  is 
more  than  ever  a  passing  traveller,  hardly 
concerning  himself  with  Nubia's  forlorn  little 
patch  of  green.  He  is  journeying  to  his 
Egypt.  You  never  heard  him  called  the 
river  of  Nubia,  nor  yet,  for  all  the  thousands 
of  miles  he  goes,  anything  else  than  the  river 
of  Eg}'pt. 

February  17. — From  the  condemnation  of 
old  Egyptian  art  I  passed  the  other  day  I 
must  now  except  Abu  Simbel.  It  is  the  most 
orio-inal  and  by  far  the  most  impressive  of  the 
ancient  monuments.  We  saw  it  first  at  night 
by  flaring  hmelight.  Tlie  temple  is  hewn  out 
\  of  a  solid  clifi*  of  red  sandstone.      The  door  is 


AN    IMPRESSIVE    MONUMENT.  261 

a  low  one ;  the  squared  face  and  the  interior 
very  high.  Here  again,  as  in  all  the  other 
temples,  the  mechanical  wonder  of  the  achieve- 
ment is  more  than  the  beauty  of  it.  Yet  Abu 
Simbel,  if  not  beautiful,  is  grand.  For,  two 
on  either  side  of  the  doorway,  sit  four  colossal) 
statues,  carved  in  relief  out  of  the  rock  face. 
They  are  so  well  proportioned  that  they  do 
not  strike  you  as  immense,  but  how  immense 
they  are  you  may  judge  from  the  fragments 
of  one  that  has  fallen.  In  the  morning  there 
they  sat — one  defaced,  three  almost  perfect, 
leaning  in  quiet  majesty  against  the  precipice, 
gazing  across  the  river  to  the  climbing  sun. 
The  interior  of  the  temple  is  nothing,  and 
there  are  no  houses  nor  any  buildings  near, 
nor  any  growth  or  other  sign  of  life.  Nothing 
at  all  in  sight  but  those  four  great,  silent 
serene  warders  by  the  door,  looking  change- 
lessly  out  over  the  river  to  the  desolation. 

Thence,  in  the  early  afternoon,  we  came  to 
wind  -  swept  Wady  Haifa  —  the  end  of  our 
journey — for  so  many  years  the  end  of  the 
authority  of  Egypt.     Few    towns   have   had 


262 


THROUGH   NUBIA. 


more  varying  fortunes  in  the  last  two  decades. 
It  was  always  bound  to  exist,  because  It  is  at 
the  foot  of  the  second  cataract.  Once  it  was 
to  be  the  great  terminus  of  Ismail's  railway  to 
Khartoum.      In    Egypt's   evil   days   it   was    a 


\ 


JF.idj'  Haifa  from  the  Nik. 

great  fortress  and  garrison  town — which  is 
why  its  little  bazaar  of  Tenfikish  is  warned  off 
to  a  mile  below  it.  Five  years  ago  raiding 
dervishes  crept  round  the  town,  and  hacked 
and  stabbed  through  all  the  bazaar.     To-day 


WADY   HALFA. 


263 


Haifa  is  almost  bare  of  garrison,  but  all  day  it 
clanks,  and  crashes,  and  rings  with  the  labour 
of  transport  and  railway  engineering.  It 
looks  no  longer  backward  to  Egypt,  which  it 
used  to  guard,  but  forward  to  the  conquests 
for  which  it  purveys.  Which  is  one  more 
token,  for  the  very  end  of  your  journey,  that 
England  is  going  through  with  her  work  in 
Egypt. 


Street  in  Jradv  Haifa. 


264 


XXIV. 

COOK. 

IB  UK  A  MAN  OR  A  MACHINE? — OVERCOMINQ  NATIVE  PREJU- 
DICES— TRIAL  OF  THE  PRINCE  ABBAS — A  MAN  OF  FORCE — A 
WONDERFUL  ORGANISATION — INFLUX  OF  TOURISTS — GERMANS 
IN   EGYPT — COOK   PASHA. 

February  18. — To  the  general  English  mind 
Cook  represents  a  sort  of  machine  which  sits 
in  Ludgate  Circus  and  punches  little  holes  in 
tickets.  It  never  occurred  to  me,  somehow, 
that  Cook  might  be  a  man.  But  he  is.  I 
have  seen  him,  and  spoken  with  him,  and 
eaten  with  him,  and  voyaged  with  him  four 
days,  and  he  is  very  much  a  man  indeed. 

Is  it  not  a  wonderful  chance  to  meet  with 
Cook  in  the  flesh  ?  It  would  hardly  be  more 
stirring  to  meet  the  Attraction  of  Gravitation 
in  a  Terai  hat  standing  solidly  at    Assouan 


COOK    IN    THE    FLESH.  265 

Railway  Station.  People  like  Cook,  Carter 
Paterson,  or  Barclay  Perkins,  we  just  accept 
as  part  of  the  necessary  organisation  of  the 
world  :  to  me,  at  any  rate,  it  never  occurred 
that  they  were  real  people.  Nor  am  I  the 
only  person  to  whom  Cook  was  a  sort  of  law 
of  nature,  but  who  was  undeceived.  Some 
years  ago  Mr  J.  M.  Cook  was  dining  in  a  hotel 
opposite  two  ladies  from  Boston,  who  assured 
him  of  their  own  personal  knowledge  that 
there  was  no  longer  any  member  of  the  firm 
called  Cook,  but  that  the  business  had  come 
entirely  into  American  hands.  "  I  was  very 
mterested  to  hear  it,"  says  Mr  Cook,  with 
that  genial  grimness  which  is  all  his  own ; 
"  but  before  I'd  done  I  managed  to  convince 
'em  that  I  was  myself" 

That  is  just  what  he  does  do :  he  manages 
to  convince  everybody  that  he  is  himself  He 
has  been  doing  it  in  Egypt  especially  for  some 
thirty  years  up  and  down  the  Nile ;  and  in 
Egypt,  consequently,  they  know  that  Mr  Cook 
is  himself  perhaps  better  than  we  do  generally 
at  home.     One  of  the  first  persons  to  realise 


266  COOK. 

the  Interesting  fact  was  the  dragoman  of  the 
very  first  tourist  steamer  which  young  Mr 
Cook — he  was  then  "  and  Son  " — took  up  the 
Nile.  For  since  he  was  insubordinate  and 
impertinent,  Mr  Cook  threw  him  into  the 
Nile  at  Luxor  to  think  it  over  there,  and 
dragomanned  his  party  up  to  Assouan  himself 
A  man  like  this  was  just  the  man  for  Egypt. 
He  knew  what  he  wanted,  and  he  meant  to 
get  it :  he  did  get  it,  and,  what  was  as  much 
to  the  point,  it  was  the  right  thing  to  want. 
Up  and  down  the  Nile  he  went ;  he  knew  all 
the  dragomans  and  the  boat-captains — and 
they  came  to  know  him.  For  a  small  thing, 
just  to  show  you,  the  early  steamers  were 
steered  by  a  tiller  :  as  the  pilot  had  to  sit 
right  forward,  so  as  to  see  the  channel,  the 
tiller  became  unearthly  long  and  infernally 
clumsy.  But  the  pilots  wouldn't  hear  of  steer- 
ing by  a  wheel — it  had  never  been  done  on 
the  Nile,  they  pointed  out,  and  therefore  it 
never  could  be  done.  So  Mr  Cook  built  liis 
boat  with  a  wheel,  and  steered  her  himself 
Now  the  steamer  pilots  look  down  on  their 


HIS    FIRST    NILE    STEAMER.  267 

unfortunate  brethren  who  have  no  wheel,  and 
wonder  how  they  can  possibly  do  with  that 
clumsy  tiller.  " 

At  first  he  ran  the  Egyptian  Government's 
steamers  ;  then  he  built  the  Prince  Abbas,  A 
high-built,  flat-bottomed  boat  like  that,  though, 
said  the  wise  men  of  Egypt,  would  capsize  in 
the  first  gale.  And  when  she  lay  for  days  in 
his  arsenal  at  Bulac,  without  going  out  for 
her  trials,  they  opined  that  the  madman  Cook 
was  punished  for  his  rashness  at  last.  "  But 
I  was  waiting  for  a  gale  of  wind,"  explains  Mr 
Cook,  and  when  the  barometer  promised  one 
he  went  down  to  the  arsenal  and  ordered 
everything  ready  for  the  trial.  "  Better  wait," 
said  the  manager ;  "  there's  a  gale  coming." 
"  That's  just  why  I'm  taking  her  out,"  said 
Mr  Cook ;  and  out  he  took  her,  and  she  was 
steady  as  a  rock.  No  more  whispering  about 
the  stability  of  Cook's  Nile  steamers  after 
that. 

And  what  does  he  look  like  ?  He  looks  as 
you  would  expect  him  to  look.  Tall  and 
strongly  knit,  he  stands  erect  and  firm  on  his 


268  COOK. 

legs  to-day,  though  his  beard  is  snow-white 
and  his  round  forehead  is  bare.  His  white 
eyebrows  bristle  resolutely  over  just  the  eyes 
that  such  a  man  ought  to  have — eyes  that 
look  out  of  their  sockets  like  a  gun  out  of  a 
port,  blue  eyes  that  seem  to  have  a  backward 
surface  looking  at  the  brain,  eyes  that  think  as 
well  as  see.  They  must  be  as  clear  and  his 
voice  as  full  and  firm  to  -  day  as  when  he 
ducked  the  dragoman ;  his  movements  and 
gait,  I  am  afraid,  are  a  little  stiffer,  but  they 
are  strong,  and  it  is  the  gait  of  a  man  who 
knows  whither  he  is  going  and  intends  getting 
there.  Altogether  a  man  of  force — a  man  also 
of  humour,  of  much  kindness,  but  primarily 
a  man  of  force.  I  would  sooner  have  him  for 
my  friend  than  for  my  enemy.  Yet  I  would 
sooner  have  him  for  my  enemy  than  most  men  ; 
for  he  would  hit  straight,  and  expect  to  be 
hit  straight  back. 

Apply  this  kind  of  man  to  a  country  like 
Egypt  and  you  will  get  results.  The  results 
in  Mr  Cook's  case  are,  first,  his  own  success, 
the  establishment  of  the  largest  British  busi- 


A  VAST  BENEFIT  TO  EGYPT.      269 

ness  in  Egypt ;  second,  the  opening  up  of 
Egypt  as  a  holiday  -  land  to  all  the  world ; 
third,  a  vast  benefit  to  Egypt  herself.  Of  the 
private  prosperity  of  Thomas  Cook  &  Son 
(Egypt),  Limited,  it  is  not  in  my  power,  and 
it  is  not  my  business,  to  tell  you ;  but  I  can 
give,  and  have  given,  you  a  few  hints  about 
the  wonderful  organisation  which  deserves 
and  commands  success.  Perhaps  you  think  I 
have  said  too  much.  But  you  wouldn't  if  you 
were  in  Egypt,  for  in  a  land  of  wonders  I  do 
not  know  but  that  the  ramifications  of  Cook  & 
Son  are  the  most  wonderful  feature.  In 
Egypt  he  who  puts  himself  into  the  hands 
of  Cook  can  go  anywhere  and  do  anything. 
Whether  it  be  the  transport  of  an  army  or 
the  regulations  for  the  use  of  a  steamer's  bath- 
room, you  will  find  every  point  thought  of,  and 
every  point  thought  out. 

That,  of  course,  is  why  Egypt  is  full  of 
strangers.  They  are  beginning  to  leave  Cairo 
by  now,  I  expect,  though  there  are  still  a  few 
weeks  of  Egyptian  season  left.  Anyhow,  we 
are  near  enough  to  the  end  to  know  that  this 


270  COOK. 

has  been  the  fullest  and  the  most  brilliant 
season  that  Egypt  has  ever  had.  Some  people 
say  there  have  been  50,000  visitors,  though 
that  seems  impossible  ;  yet  the  hotels  of  Cairo 
will  hold,  I  suppose,  nearly  2000  visitors,  and 
they  change  continually.  Of  the  gaieties  of 
the  season  I  can  tell  you  little ;  I  was  not 
there  to  enjoy  myself.  But  every  night  there 
was  a  dance  somewhere  or  other,  and  there 
were  races  on  the  palm  -  fringed  course  at 
Gezireh ;  I  did  so  far  forget  myself  as  to 
attend  these,  and  the  wind  cut  for  all  the 
world  like  our  native  Newmarket's. 

One  thing  is  certain,  and  that  is  that  Cook's 
facilities  have  resulted  in  a  prodigious  influx 
of  every  nation  into  Egypt  for  the  winter 
time.  They  come  from  every  country  you 
would  know,  and  from  every  other  one  be- 
sides :  I  have  met  Swedes,  Portuguese,  Siam- 
ese, and  Brazilians  in  the  course  of  the  same 
day.  British  and  American  predominate,  but 
perhaps  what  strikes  you  most  is  the  swarm  of 
Germans.     Ten  years  ago  you  would  have  said 


THE    GERMAN   ABROAD.  271 

they  had  neither  the  money  nor  the  enterprise 
to  take  them  farther  than  Naples.  To-day 
you  meet  them  everywhere.  We  had  a  sing- 
song on  one  of  the  tourist  steamers  coming  up, 
and  a  German,  being  asked  to  play  by  some 
practical  joker,  gave  us  forty-five  minutes  of 
the  "  Nibelung's  Ring."  There  was  nothing, 
given  your  German,  extraordinary  in  that : 
the  striking  point  was  that  there  were  enough 
Germans  round  to  give  him  a  hand.  The  Ger- 
man in  Egypt  gets  himself  up  exactly  in  the 
manner  of  the  comic  Englishman  of  the  Conti- 
nental circus.  Men  in  huge  helmets,  with 
huge  puggary,  huge  blue  goggles,  knicker- 
bockers, and  chess-board  stockings  ;  women  in 
the  same  helmets  and  goggles,  vast  blue  veils, 
sunshade,  short  skirts,  and  vast  hands  and 
feet ;  both  sexes  crested  with  Meyer  or 
Baedeker  rampant — they  make  a  picture  at 
which  native  Egypt  gapes  in  undisguised 
delight. 

Lastly,  Mr  Cook  is  a  blessing  to  Egypt — 
perhaps  the  only  one  of  Egypt's  recent  bless- 


272  COOK. 

ings  which  nobody  disputes.  It  is  not  only 
the  vast  amount  of  money  he  brings  into  the 
country,  nor  the  vast  number  of  people  he 
directly  employs.  Besides  that,  you  will  find 
natives  all  up  the  Nile  who  practically  live  on 
him.  Those  donkeys  are  subsidised  by  Cook  ; 
that  little  plot  of  lettuce  is  being  grown  for 
Cook,  and  so  are  the  fowls ;  those  boats  tied 
up  on  the  bank  were  built  by  the  sheikh  of  the 
Cataracts  for  the  tourist  service  with  money 
advanced  by  Cook. 

Therefore,  when  "the  Governor"  is  pleased 
to  travel  up  and  down  his  Nile,  you  may  see 
the  natives  coming  up  to  him  in  long  lines, 
salaaming  and  kissing  his  hand.  When  he 
appears  they  assemble  and  chant  a  song  with 
refrain,  "  Goood-mees-ta-Cook."  Once  he  took 
Lord  Cromer  up  the  Nile,  and  they  went  to 
visit  a  desert  sheikh  somewhere  at  the  back  of 
Luxor.  The  old  man  had  no  idea  that  the 
British  had  been  possessing  Egypt  all  these 
years  —  barely  knew  that  the  late  Khedive 
was  dead. 

"  Haven't  you   ever  heard  of  me  ? "  asked 


THE  sheikh's  testimony.  273 

Lord    Cromer.      No ;    the   sheikh    had    never 

heard  of  Lord  Cromer. 

"  Have  you  heard  of  Mr  Cook  ? " 

"  Oh,  yes  ;  Cook  Pasha — everybody  knows 

Cook  Pasha." 


274 


XXV. 

LOOKING    BACK    AND    FORWARD. 

THE  APPROACH  OF  SUMMER  —  THE  ESSENTIAL  EGYPT  —  BACK- 
SHEESH—  ENGLISH  WORKERS  IN  EGYPT  —  THE  PICK  OF  THE 
WORLD — THE  DANGER  OP  AN  UNCONQUERED  SUDAN — INTER- 
NATIONAL  BURDENS— NO   CHANCE   OP   OUR   LEAVING   EGYPT. 

February  21. — Now  we  have  come  to  the 
very  end  of  Egypt,  and  stepped  over  the 
threshold  of  the  Sudan,  it  is  natural  to  look 
back  for  a  moment  down  the  Nile.  Day  by 
day  it  is  dropping  down  its  banks,  and  each 
mail  steamer  comes  up  a  little  more  delayed, 
by  running  ashore,  than  the  last.  Each 
morning  a  little  more  black  mud  is  laid 
bare  at  the  water's  edge.  In  mid  -  stream 
three  days  ago  there  appeared  a  shadow ; 
yesterday  it  had  darkened  to  a  black  bank ; 
to-day    there   are    natives   wading    over   it, 


THE    CHARM    OF   EGYrT.  275 

staking  out  their  melon  -  patches.  Summer 
is  close  on  us — the  torrid  Sudan  summer, 
which  begins  in  March.  The  water  is 
changing  from  brown  to  green,  which  means 
that  the  Abyssinian  mud  is  all  exhausted, 
and  what  passes  us  now  is  the  rainfall  and 
decayed  green-stuff  of  Uganda.  This  is  the 
back  of  the  wonderful  page  of  Egypt's  fertility 
— the  opening  of  the  months  of  sterility  and 
dust  and  parching  heat. 

When  you  come  to  Egypt  be  sure  you 
eome  up  the  Nile,  for  until  then  you  have 
not  begun  to  see  the  essential  Egypt.  The 
mud  huts  and  the  water-wheels,  the  clumsy 
ploughs  and  unhandy  mattocks,  the  buffaloes 
and  donkeys,  the  palms  and  green  corn — it 
is  all  very  Egypt,  now  and  seven  thousand 
3^ears  ago.  And  it  all  has  a  flavour  that  is 
like  nothing  else  in  the  world.  Egypt  is 
neither  Europe,  Asia,  nor  Africa  :  set  at  the 
corner  of  all  three,  it  takes  character  from 
each,  and  overlays  it  with  a  filmy  something 
of  its  own.  It  is  European  politically,  Asiatic 
industrially,   African  geographically ;  yet  its 


276  LOOKING    BACK    AND    FORWARD 

politics  are  all  its  own,  its  industries  are  not 
quite  like  any  other,  and  the  lands  it  seems 
to  bound  are,  in  fact,  the  farthest  away 
from  it.  I 

How  so  ?  Because  of  the  Nile.  The  river 
makes  the  best  part  of  its  external  politics ; 
the  existence  of  a  living  river  near  this  desert 
gate  between  east  and  west  gives  it  all  its 
external  importance.  The  river  shapes  its 
arts  and  handicrafts,  and  turns  them  into 
variations  which  find  a  place  nowhere  else 
in  the  world.  The  river,  finally,  by  a  miracle 
of  geography,  husbands  itself  through  two 
thousand  miles  of  desert,  to  pour  all  its 
riches  into  the  lap  of  Egypt.  There  is  no 
other  country  in  the  least  like  Egypt,  because 
there  is  only  one  Nile. 

Then  again,  unless  you  go  up  the  Nile 
you  will  hardly  see  the  Egyptian.  You  will 
answer  that  you  do  not  want  to  see  the 
debased  and  parasitic  Egyptian  who  cringes 
for  backsheesh.  But  that,  I  am  afraid,  is 
just  the  Egyptian  you  ought  to  see ;  add 
hard   work,   and   that  is  just   the  Egyptian. 


CHARACTER   OF    THE    EGYPTIAN.  277 

He  is  industrious — in  winter ;  in  summer  he) 
does  nothing  —  there  is  nothing  to  do ;  en- 
during and  cheerful ;  but  there  his  virtues 
end.  He  has  no  self-control,  no  honesty,  \ 
no  courage,  no  independence,  no  initiative. 
And  unless  you  keep  the  curb  on  him,  his  \ 
industry  will  vanish,  and  his  cheerfulness 
turn  to  impertinence.  He  was  born  to  ask 
for  backsheesh  and  do  what  he  is  told. 

And  after  all  the  seons  of  his  wonderful 
history  —  after  his  early  strivings  towards 
civilisation,  his  victories,  and  his  massive, 
funereal  greatness ;  after  his  conquest  by 
Persians,  Macedonians,  and  Romans ;  after 
his  Christianity,  his  Mussulmanism,  and  con- 
version from  Copt  to  Arab,  the  wars  of 
Crusader  and  Turk  and  Mameluke,  French- 
man and  Englishman  —  at  the  end  of  his 
sixty -ninth  century,  he  seems  at  last  to 
have  found  a  master  who  is  telling  him  to 
do  the  right  things.  The  tangle  of  im- 
memorial confusion  and  wrong  looks  like  to 
be  unravelled  and  wound  up  straight  at  last. 

Of  the  men  who  are  doing  this  work  for 


278  LOOKING    BACK    AND    FORWARD. 

Egypt,  for  Britain  and  the  world,  whether. 
In  the  Government  offices  or  by  the  Canal 
banks,  or  In  camp  with  their  faces  towards 
Khartoum,  we  may  all  be  endlessly  proud. 
Gifted  with  all  the  Briton's  misfortunes  of 
manner,  and  in  no  way  troubling  themselves 
to  cloak  their  plenitude  of  authority,  they 
are  disliked  in  Egypt ;  but  they  are  obeyed 
and  they  are  trusted.  No  money  will  buy 
the  Briton,  and  no  risk  will  deter  him,  when 
it  is  a  case  of  duty — that  the  Arab  knows 
well.  For  himself  he  rather  despises  that 
frame  of  mind,  but  as  a  rule  he  recognises 
its  utility.  The  Briton  does  his  duty,  and, 
what  is  more,  he  does  it  well.  In  our  country 
we  are  most  of  us  honest  and  reasonably 
\  ready  to  take  risks  if  need  be ;  but  we  are 
not  all  good  at  our  work.  The  men  in 
Egypt  are :  they  are  all  picked  men  —  the 
pick  of  Britain,  which  is  to  say  the  pick  of 
the  world. 

What  they  have  done  I  have  tried  to  sketch 
for  you ;  now  a  word  about  what  is  still  to  do. 
And  first  for  the  shadow  that  has  hung  over 


GUARDING    THE    NILE.  279 

Egypt  all  the  years  that  England  has  been 
there  —  the  Sudan.  I  cannot  see  that  the 
Sudan  will  add  a  piastre  to  Egypt's  wealth, 
nor,  except  as  a  recruiting-ground,  an  ounce 
to  her  power ;  yet  reconquered  the  Sudan 
must  be.  Kun  over  what  we  have  seen  of 
Egypt,  and  then  try  to  imagine  Egypt  with- 
out the  Nile,  or  with  less  Nile.  The  first 
means  starvation  for  the  whole  country,  the 
second  distress  and  the  stoppage  of  all  pro- 
gress. The  danger  that  the  Upper  Nile 
might  be  tapped  for  irrigation  is  not,  perhaps, 
a  very  immediate  one,  but  neither  is  it  alto- 
gether imaginary.  As  long  as  it  is  so  much 
as  a  possibility  Egypt  must  guard  against  it 
at  all  costs,  for  to  her  the  Nile  —  and  the 
whole  Nile — means  daily  bread. 

You  should  add  to  this  that  the  presence 
of  a  constantly  hostile  power  on  her  frontier 
must  be,  in  time,  far  more  wearing,  far  more 
costly,  than  any  campaign.  The  constant 
menace  keeps  the  border  fortresses  awake  and 
the  watching  armies  always  on  a  war  footing. 
Moreover — why  not  tell  the  truth  ? — there  is 


280  LOOKING    BACK    AND    FORWARD. 

a  vast  deal  of  opinion  in  Egypt,  which  would 
be  only  too  delighted  to  hear  of  a  dervish 
victory.  You  won't  find  that  opinion  up  in 
Dongola,  or  even  here  in  Haifa,  where  the 
people  have  tried  what  a  raid  feels  like,  and 
if  the  dervishes  were  to  invade  Egypt  you 
wouldn't  find  it  anywhere  else  very  long ;  but 
at  present  it  exists,  and  it  unsettles  things. 
Egypt  will  never  quite  sit  down  beneath  our 
rule  as  long  as  we  have  an  enemy  unbeaten 
in  the  south  ;  and  the  very  being  of  Mahdism 
forbids  the  possibility  that  the  enemy  should 
ever  be  a  friend.  So  that  the  sooner  it's 
over  and  done  with  the  better  for  Egypt  and 
everybody. 

Until  then  Egypt  can  do  nothing,  because 
Egypt  will  be  a  beggar.  When  that  is  done, 
the  weirs  at  the  Barrage  and  the  new  barrages 
at  Assouan  and  Assiut  will  be  her  chief  work 
for  the  next  years.  We  have  heard  vaguely 
up  here  that  the  contract  for  these  is  already 
signed  ;  though  where  the  money  is  to  come 
from,  the  meagre  telegrams  do  not  say. 
Another  work  of  importance  is  the  readjust- 


INTERNATIONAL    BURDENS.  281 

ment  of  the  land-tax,  which  is  arbitrary  and 
inequitable  :  I  do  not  quite  understand  why 
this  has  not  been  done  before.  After  that 
there  is  still  plenty  and  plenty  of  work  to, 
be  done,  especially  in  the  way  of  education. ' 
The  administration  of  the  railways,  again, 
strikes  a  stranger  as  very  bad ;  while  in  the 
domain  of  justice  the  Egyptian,  much  im- 
proved, has  still  to  learn  enough  for  very 
many  years. 

But  the  country  will  not  top  the  Nile  diffi- 
culty until  it  can  get  its  international  burdens 
off  its  back.  The  inability  to  tax  foreigners 
adequately,  the  inability  to  bring  them  to 
trial,  the  inability  to  spend  her  own  money — 
the  Capitulations,  the  Mixed  Tribunals,  and 
the  Caisse  de  la  Dette — must  all  go  sooner 
or  later.  Internally  their  abolition  would  at 
last  give  Egypt  a  free  hand.  She  has  had 
a  free  hand  in  her  history  before,  and  for  tlie 
last  fifteen  years  she  has  had  a  prudent  and 
honest  government ;  but  she  has  never  yet 
had  both  together.  When  she  gets  them  we 
shall  see  what  can  be  done  with  her. 


282  LOOKING    BACK    AND    FORWARD. 

Externally,  the  Capitulations,  the  Mixed 
Courts,  and  the  Caisse  contribute  to  a  curious 
deadlock.  While  they  exist  Egypt  is  in  tute- 
lage ;  their  existence  is  sufficient  evidence  in 
itself  that  the  civilised  world  does  not  consider 
her  fit  for  independent  self  -  government. 
Therefore  so  long  as  they  exist  it  is  vain  to 
ask  us  to  evacuate  the  country.  If  Egypt 
can  be  trusted,  we  shall  answer,  Knock  off 
her  fetters.  If  she  cannot,  then  we  stay  ;  for 
after  our  past  sacrifices  we  shall  assuredly 
not  hand  over  the  work  to  be  worse  done 
by  somebody  else. 

There  is  no  chance  of  Europe  knocking  off 
the  fetters,  and  there  Is  no  chance,  therefore, 
of  our  leaving  Egypt.  I  do  not  think  that 
we  shall  ever  leave.  This  is  awkward,  because 
we  promised  to  —  gave  a  perfectly  sincere 
promise  which  we  have  not  been  able  to 
fulfil.  I  do  not  think  we  ever  shall  be  able 
to  fulfil  it  without  wasting  an  enormous  deal 
of  splendid  work  —  which  we  shall  not  do. 
Some  day,  perhaps,  we  shall  square  the  situ- 
ation,  either  by  agreement  or    after  a   war. 


WHAT   THE    WHOLE    WORLD    KNOWS.      283 

In  the  meantime,  the  world  is  full  of  Tunises 
and  Chantabuns,  'Kiao  -  Chaus  and  Port 
Arthurs  :  we  need  not  distress  ourselves. 
The  whole  world  knows,  in  its  heart,  that 
we  are  staying  in  Egypt  ;  and  the  whole 
world,  in  its  sleeve,  is  very  well  satisfied. 


Old  mosque  tomb. 


S2I 


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